The analysis that he has performed on the fossil indicates that the snake lived approximately 110 million years ago on the territory of Brazil. It has been long debated whether snakes evolved from marine creatures or earth dwellers, and the argument seems to be slowly leaning toward one side.
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Tetrapodophis had four legs which were used for catching prey and mating with partners, thus they coined it as the “four-legged hugging snake”.
The study led by University of Portsmouth has however concluded the find, named Tetrapodophis amplectus, is the oldest definitive snake that proves the reptiles evolved from burrowing lizards and not marine ones.
Researcher Dave Martill from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom said he found the fossil during a field trip with students to Museum Solnhofen, Germany, which is well known for fossils.The object “was part of a larger exhibition of fossils from the Cretaceous period”, the last great age of the dinosaurs, he said. It’s the first four-legged snake fossil ever discovered, bridging the gap between snakes and lizards, says paleontologist Michael Lee of the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide.
Helmut Tischlinger said: “The preservation of the little snake is absolutely exquisite”.
In other words, the fossil suggests that snakes may have originated from burrowing lizards.
The fossil was excavated in Brazil decades ago and had been sitting untouched in a private collection until Martill came across it and began studying it, the journal Nature reported.
“I think the specimen is important, but I do not know what it is”, he adds.
“The hands and feet are very specialized for grasping”.
The family tree that the British group of researchers have created was used to determine the ancient snake’s position in history. The front legs are very small-only about one centimeter long-but have elbows, wrists, and hands.
The back legs are slightly longer and the feet are larger than the hands. So when snakes stopped walking and started slithering, the legs didn’t become useless little vestiges-they started using them for something else.
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Some of the reasons why scientists classified the fossil as that of a snake is because the skeleton is of an animal that had a lengthened body, not just a long tail; the tooth implantation, the direction of the teeth, and the pattern of the teeth and the bones of the lower jaw are all snake-like; and the fossil displays hints of a single row of belly scales, a sure fire way to differentiate a snake from a lizard. Tetrapodophis has 272 vertebrae, 160 of which are in its main body, not its tail. This could indicate that snakes were carnivorous earlier than had been supposed.
