NEW YORK: A research team led by Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist from the University of Alberta, announced that the four snake fossils, the oldest of which was discovered in a quarry close to Oxford, England, lived around 167 million years in the past. This new date pushes the oldest known snake fossil back from 102 million years ago, Caldwell said.
Snake evolution includes lizards in their progenitors, scientists say. In fact many primitive snake species fossils have had small, nearly vestigial back legs. While the four fossil remains announced on Tuesday were not intact, researchers say there’s evidence that all four of them had hind limbs as well as evidence of forelimbs that had begun to shrink in size. Caldwell remarked that the small limbs were likely used for grasping, not walking, and that these proto-snakes likely spent the majority of the time on their stomachs slithering along.
The skull anatomy of the snakes, according to the paleontologist, had several similarities to both other fossilized snake remains and modern snakes as well. This indicated to Caldwell that the characteristic shape and size of the snake skull was probably one of the very first things to evolve, well before snakes lost their forelimbs and hind limbs.
According to Caldwell, among the four snake species discovered in fossil form none were venomous. In fact, venomous snakes are unlikely to have emerged until around 20 million years in the past, which is when paleontologists first began discovering snake fossils that featured the characteristics of venomous snakes.
The four snake fossils discovered by researchers ranged in age from 144 million and 167 million years, clearly evidence placing snake development and evolution at its earliest point. Still, other researchers involved in the study, such as Sebastián Apesteguía of Universidad Maimonides in Argentina, says that snake species could date back as far as 190 million years in the past. Very little is known for sure about the origins of the snake, even today, Apesteguía added.
