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Ancient snakes had tiny hind legs, hunted in the dinosaur’s world

A new study seeks to answer the questions regarding where, when, and how modern snakes evolved. Published Tuesday in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, the study is expected to reveal key details about the origin and early history of these remarkable vertebrates, The Raw Story reports. Researchers analyzed snake genomes, modern snake anatomy, and new information gleaned from the fossil record.

“We generated the first comprehensive reconstruction of what the ancestral snake was like” Yale postdoctoral researcher Allison Hsiang, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “We infer that the most recent common ancestor of all snakes was a nocturnal, stealth-hunting predator targeting relatively large prey, and most likely would have lived in forested ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere.”

For the study, the researchers generated a family tree for living and extinct snakes. They also examined crucial evolutionary patterns that have played an important role throughout the evolution of snakes.

“Having that tree as a backbone let us draw a ton of conclusions for what the ancestral snake would have been like,” Daniel J. Field, a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology and also an author of the study told The New York Times. The team concluded that the most recent common ancestor of living snakes was nocturnal, thriving 128.5 million years ago in the Southern Hemisphere and feasting on relatively large prey by using sharp, hooked teeth as a hunting tool.

Working towards this conclusion, the team first reconstructed the snake’s family tree from tips to trunk. To gain a better understanding of when certain characteristics appeared — such as the ability to constrict prey or to hunt at night — first appeared, the researchers connected the dots by using genetic and morphological data they had collected and were able to piece together how different groups of living snakes are related to each other.

The researchers mapped the relationships among distinct snake groups. Then, in a process known as ancestral state reconstruction, the paleontologists used algorithms to fill in when each trait evolved. Field and his team were able to identify 11 characteristics that they wanted to add to the snake’s tree of life. Like an open book, each trait would answer a question regarding snake evolution that scientists frequently debate.

Questions like:

Did ancient snakes dwell in water or on land? Did they originate in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Did they forage for food or ambush prey?

The snake’s family tree gave the scientists a chance to rule out traits that couldn’t have belonged to the most recent ancestor of modern snakes and helped them to reconstruct a model of what traits it did have. The researchers found that it didn’t constrict prey like today’s boas and pythons, but did have remnants of hind legs. These were likely vestigial structures that didn’t serve any purpose in locomotion.

“I was most amazed by how strongly we inferred that the common ancestor retained hind limbs,” he said.

As effective as this ancestral reconstruction is, it’s not without it’s limitations. Since there are no fossil records of the most recent common ancestor of living snakes, Field noted that he and his team don’t have any way of confirming that the creature they recreated with their models is correct.

“Sometimes evolution plays out in unexpected and strange ways,” he said. “We think we’ve got a strongly supported idea, and based on the mathematical reconstruction it is what is most likely to be true.”

One snake from the Cretaceous of what is now Lebanon, is known to have vestigial hind legs. Eupodophis descouensi had hind legs that bent at the knee, and these legs were equipped with four anklebones, but no foot or toe bones, Discovery News reports.

This photo clearly shows the vestigial hind leg in the Cretaceous snake Eupodophis descouensi.

This photo clearly shows the vestigial hind leg in the Cretaceous snake Eupodophis descouensi.
By Mars Turner (Paleopolis Eupodophis descouensi pictures) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Pythons and boa constrictors still harbor vestigial legs, which are tiny leg bones buried in muscles near their tails, The American Museum of Natural History(AMNH) notes. These tiny legs are a clue that snakes likely evolved from lizards,

Dinosaurs and the earliest snakes had to deal with the notorious extinction event that ended the Mesozoic period, but the researchers believe that snakes, unlike the dinosaurs, flourished during this time, The Washington Post reports. The massive die-off that resulted may have helped snakes to thrive.

Snake ancestors “were able to take advantage of the relatively empty landscape left behind by the dinosaurs,” Field and Hsiang wrote in a blog post to explain their findings. Now there were large ecological niches since the dominant animals were no longer there, and this was definitely a boon for the snakes and early mammals who wasted no time in seizing this opportunity.

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