Fossils of the four ancient species of snakes have been found in England, Portugal and the United States, and are dated about 143 and 167 million years ago, the researchers said. Fossils can be as much as nearly 70 million years older than the previous oldest known fossil snakes, which date back about 100 million years ago.
A new study suggests that "the skull turned first, and legless that followed," said study author Michael Caldwell, professor and chair of the department of biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Canada.
This sample was 143 million years Parviraptor estesi, the youngest of four species of snakes described in the new study. Caldwell also found three other species of snakes, outlined in an article of the samples that were previously misidentified as lizards.
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Meretricious
That's pretty cool. I wonder if any of them were the talking snakes I've read about. If they were, I'll bet they spoke American.
Rel
(Leglessness doth not a snake make: There are, in fact, legless lizards today.) Small problem with logic. Lizards without legs have absolutely nothing to do with whether snakes can or can't have legs! There are snakes (boids) today with reduced leg bones still present.
Dakota Hudson
This is simply incredible. It leads me to wonder about where these discoveries will lead in figuring out the origins of snakes and their connections with other ancestral Squmates.
