Young snakes die hard in amber graves 99 million years

Researchers found the oldest fossil of a sapling young snake falling when crawling from the shell in the Cretaceous forest.

The young snake crawled out of its shell 99 million years ago in Southeast Asia without a chance to grow up. Instead, it was hit by tree sap and eventually died hard in the amber grave. Although the snake hatched in the ancient Cretaceous ancient forest did not mature, its intact preserved corpse still gave scientists a clearer view of the past, according to Live Science.

The amber mass holds two special fossils: the tiny young snake and the peeling piece of skin that is thought to belong to a larger snake. Both provide interesting evidence of the ancestors of modern snakes that lived millions of years ago, according to research published yesterday in Science Advances magazine.

Researchers found that many Burmese amber specimens contain fossil insects and plants, but have recently discovered fossils of vertebrate animals, according to research co-author Michael Caldwell, professor of biology. Study at the University of Alberta in Canada. The sample of amber in the study was donated by a private collector to the museum of Dexu Paleontological Institute near Beijing.

Inside the amber block, the scientists found half the spine of an intact embryo or newly hatched snake, consisting of about 97 bones and 4.8 cm long. The first part was lost, but the team identified it as a new species and named it Xiaophis myanmarensis .

Young snake and peeled snake skin in 99 million year amber in Myanmar.(Photo: Ming Bai).

"Although it is a young snake, there are many unique features in the spine head that we have never seen in other solid fossil models of the same type. ancient, " Caldwell said.

The team is much more difficult to identify the piece of peeled snake skin near the young snake. The skin was so small that they didn't know if it was the same species as the young snake. Other organic crumbs trapped in the amber are less special, but still provide many useful details about the habitat of ancient snakes, according to Caldwell.