Snakes crawled among Jurassic dinosaurs, new timeline says
Fossils indicate flexible skulls, not legless bodies, make snakes snakes
Just call it the Jura-sssss-ic Period. Newly identified fossils suggest that snakes slithered through much of the golden age of the dinosaurs, a finding that pushes back the fossil record for snakes by 70 million years.
Ancient skulls with features similar to modern snakes tipped paleontologists off to the new timeline, they report January 27 in Nature Communications.
The fossils also indicate that snakes evolved their flexible skulls before they stretched out and lost their legs, the authors say.