A team of paleontologists led by Prof Michael Caldwell of the University of Alberta, Canada, has found the fossilized remains of four ancient legged snakes between 140 and 167 million years old. The discovery is changing the way scientists think about the origin of snakes, and how and when it happened.
The previous oldest known fossil snakes date from the Upper Cretaceous (100 million year ago) and are both morphologically and phylogenetically diverse, indicating that snakes underwent a much earlier origin and adaptive radiation.
A new paper in the journal Nature Communications reports on fossils of four legged snakes (named Eophis underwoodi, Portugalophis lignites, Diablophis gilmorei and Parviraptor estesi) that extend the record backwards in time by an additional 70 million years.
One of the four newly discovered species, Eophis underwoodi, is the world’s oldest known snake. It lived during the Bathonian stage of the Middle Jurassic, about 167 million years ago. Its fragmentary remains were recovered from Kirtlington Cement Works Quarry in Oxfordshire, England.
The North American species, Diablophis gilmorei, was found in river deposits from some distance inland in western Colorado. It lived during the Kimmeridgian stage of the Upper Jurassic.
The fossils of Parviraptor estesi were found in Durlston Bay, Dorset, England. The species lived during the Berriasian stage of the Early Cretaceous, between 145 and 140 million years ago.
“The distribution of these newly identified oldest snakes, and the anatomy of the skull and skeletal elements, makes it clear that even older snake fossils are waiting to be found.”
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