EUROPE: It may be hard to believe that snakes once had legs, though the beady-eyed reptiles are commonly accepted to have evolved from lizards.
Now the first known fossil of a four-legged snake has been discovered by scientists who believe it may help unravel the mystery of how exactly the slithering serpents lost their legs.
Dr Dave Martill, from the University of Portsmouth, said the fossil, which he found in a collection in a German museum, showed that snakes evolved from burrowing lizards and not from marine lizards.
The fossil, from Brazil, dates from the Cretaceous period and is 110 million years old, which the scientists say makes it the oldest definitive snake.
Dr Martill said: “It is generally accepted that snakes evolved from lizards at some point in the distant past. What scientists don’t know yet is when they evolved, why they evolved, and what type of lizard they evolved from.
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