First snake found in amber is a baby from the age of the dinosaurs
18 July 2018
The baby snake in amber was first mis-identified as a centipede
Ming BAI, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
By Michael Le Page
Around 100 million years ago, a baby snake hatched on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. The tiny snake, just 10 centimetres long, got stuck in resin oozing from a tree.
That chunk of resin remained buried as the island drifted north and became part of what is now Myanmar. When it was finally dug up a few years ago, the skeletal remains were misidentified as a centipede and the amber sold to a private collector.
But it has now been studied by an international team, who have scanned the amber to build up a 3D image of the skeleton. “The baby is unquestionably a snake,” says team member Michael Caldwell of the University of Alberta, Canada, a palaeontologist who specialises in studying ancient snakes and lizards. This would make it the first ever snake found in amber.
The team also studied a second piece of amber that contains what they think is a piece of skin shed by a larger snake – possibly of the same species as the baby. However, in this case the team cannot be completely certain that the skin is from a snake rather than a lizard.
More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2174474-first-snake-found-in-amber-is-a-baby-from-the-age-of-the-dinosaurs/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=life&campaign_id=RSS%7CNSNS-life
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Awesome.
