AFRICA: The first snakes were likely forest dwellers, had tiny hind legs and needle-like hooked teeth, according to the new analysis.
People have long been fascinated by snakes. They feature prominently in our creation myths, hypnotize us with their sinuous locomotion, and invade our nightmares. But very little is actually known about snake evolution.
The reason? Snakes are mostly small– with a few exceptions– and their fragile skeletons don’t leave many fossils. Large gaps therefore remain in our understanding of the snake evolutionary tree, and with such little hard evidence, theorists are left to speculate.
But a new analysis recently published by Yale University paleontologists promises to shed some light on these serpent mysteries, as well as shake up some of the prevailing theories, reports Phys.org.
“We generated the first comprehensive reconstruction of what the ancestral snake was like,” explained Allison Hsiang, lead author the study.
By analyzing snake genomes, modern snake anatomy, and new information from the fossil record, researchers inferred that the most recent common ancestor of all modern snakes likely retained tiny hind limbs, was nocturnal, and had needle-like hooked teeth. Perhaps most surprising, this protosnake probably lived on land, in the forest. This finding flies in the face of the most widely accepted theory of snake evolution, that snakes evolved their long, serpentine body design as an adaptation to a marine environment.
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