HONG KONG: During the period of the Middle Jurassic the ancient snakes used to feed on dead dinosaurs and usually on their eggs and young ones at the time when dinosaurs were evolving into land’s most dangerous predators.
A new study published in journal Nature Communications revealed that four fossils of earliest snakes showed that these reptiles dwelled the world between 140 and 167 million years before. The earliest date is almost 70 million years older than the record before of prehistoric fossils of snake.
The chief author Michael Caldwell, also the current chair of the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences and the president of Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, briefed to Discovery News, it is “very likely that snakes ate young dinosaurs or preyed upon their eggs.” He added, “A very good example comes from the Late Cretaceous of India where a well preserved snake was found in a sauropod dinosaur nest with embryos of the dinosaur still in the egg.”
Eophis underwoodi the ancient known snake was discovered in Southern England. It was not big in size, but it is also possible that it might have died young back then. Around 167 million years back in time, it lived in marsh or swamp.
The next earliest known snake is the Diablophis gilmorei which existed 155 million years ago in river or swamp area, what is presently known as Colorado. The largest known snake among the four having same age was Portugalophis lignites, it used to live in prehistoric swamp now recognized as Portugal. The youngest of all the ancient known snakes is the Parviraptor estesi which lived 140 million years in the past and got discovered from a region of lake covered with snails and algae located in Western Europe.
Caldwell said that other than living with dinosaurs, the prehistoric snakes lived side by side with amphibians, crocodiles, early mammals, lizards, numerous kinds of fishes, pterodactyls, and many other kinds of animals. He said that snakes could have preyed upon them and they could have feed on snakes.
Former fossil record proposed that the snakes appeared unexpectedly and nearly 100 million years ago got under an explosive radiation. Now it has been cleared that the evolution took place and snakes developed their limbless appearance and slithery bodies over a long time period.
