New fossils show that snakes are millions of years older than previously thought

According to new research, snakes have been with us for tens of millions of years longer than previously thought. Four new sets of fossilized snake remains from the United Kingdom, Portugal and the United States have been dated between 140 and 167 million years ago. These remains are significantly older than the oldest remains found until now.

The oldest known snake remains found previously dated back about 102 million years.

The findings will force scientists to re-think how, when and where snakes originally evolved.

“The study explores the idea that evolution within the group called ‘snakes’ is much more complex than previously thought. Importantly, there is now a significant knowledge gap to be bridged by future research as no fossils snakes are known from between 140 to 100 million years ago,” said professor Michael Caldwell in a statement. Caldwell is from the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications .

The new research puts to rest the idea that snakes made a sudden appearance 100 million years ago. For 70 million years, snakes were evolving toward the creatures we know today.

Snakes were once more similar to other reptiles and, for some reason, slowly lost their legs. There are different theories as to exactly why this happened but it is likely that the limbs because a hinderance to their movements rather than a means of movement.

“If something is not useful it can regress without any impact on the (animal’s) survival, or regression can even be positive, as for here if the leg was disturbing a kind of locomotion, like for burrowing snakes or swimming snakes,” Alexandra Houssaye, from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Discovery News in 2011.

Marine snakes from the West Bank, Lebanon, and Argentina, dated from 100-90 million years old, still show small, well developed rear limbs.

The remains discussed in the current study came from a variety of locations. The oldest specimen, Eophis underwoodi, was a small individual found in Southern England. The largest of the remains, Portugalophis lignites, came from coal deposits near Guimarota, Portugal and was about a meter in length. Other examples of this type of snake have been found in island chains in parts of western Europe. The last Diablophis gilmorei was found in river deposits in Western Colorado.

The diversity and geographic distribution of these species suggests that there are more and older remains waiting to be discovered.

“Based on the new evidence and through comparison to living legless lizards that are not snakes. the paper explores the novel idea that the evolution of the characteristic snake skull and its parts appeared long before snakes lost their legs,” said Caldwell.

None of the snakes studied were venomous. The first poisonous snakes appeared about 20 million years ago.

According to CBC News, rather than digging in the dirt for fossils Caldwell simply looked through neglected collections of lizard bones stored in museums. During previous research on lizards he had seen bones that seemed snake like in those collections.

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