Twenty - five year ago , Jurassic Parkcaptured our imagination of what we could unlock by studying tiny insects trapped in amber . But reality has pass by the fantasy . fossilist have already discovered a vast array of creatures trapped in fossilized resin , the latest of which are two Cretaceous snake . One of them is the oldest fossilized baby snake ever discovered .
As report inScience Advances , the two specimen come from the Late Cretaceous , both dating roughly to 99 million year ago . Both specie are the first ophidian dwelling in forest environments from the Mesozoic epoch , the 186 - million - year - tenacious geological period when dinosaurs roamed the Earth . The baby belongs toXiaophis myanmarensi . The 2d specimen , called DIP - V-15104 , is a peel fragment but does n’t have enough to allow for a certain classification .
" There are two important scientific consequence of this unexampled fossil , " like author Professor Michael Caldwell from the University of Alberta told IFLScience . " Because it is a baby and because uCT and Synchrotron technologies can let us appear at and inwardly of tiny things , we can both fancy this sister snake ’s general anatomy and also see inside of its bones and compare it to the bone of potentially intimately related living snakes . "
" [ Secondly ] because the gold resin is produced by a tree and contains industrial plant and dirt ball , along with the baby ophidian and the skin , we recognize these Hydra were endure in a forest of some kind – this is a first , that when coupled with the unequaled plate tectonic history , linksXiaophisto other ancient ophidian from Gondwanan continents ( South America , Africa , Madagascar , India , and Australia ) , " Professor Caldwell tot up .
The discovery of such a juvenile creature in excellent preservation conditions also tells us about the evolution of snakes over the last 100 million years and the changes in their development , what scientists call ontogeny ( how an animal goes from embryo to maturity ) . TheXiaophis myanmarensihas in its neonate country 97 vertebrae , including ribs . The physical body of this prehistoric reptile is quite similar to many live baby serpent , which advise that the ontogeny of snakes have changed very little over the last several era .
The squad suggests that these snakes might have a extensive statistical distribution across the supercontinents of the Cretaceous . advanced - day Myanmar , where the specimens were witness , would have been part of Laurasia . One of the hypotheses they put onward would have theXiaophisgo from Austral - Gondwana all the way to Laurasia by island hopping . To do so , these Snake would have found bionomic niches and remain roughly unchanged for tens of trillion of years . Although this is an intriguing idea , the team admits that there are many possibilities and that more work is needed .
" My research on fossil snake has proven that a bit of noesis ( what to look for and where to expect ) , and then a large muckle of luck in the form of attain raw specimens , mean you may not quite predict what you will learn from any one discovery , " said Professor Caldwell . " You never know when the next new discovery will move around up , but I am surefooted that someone already has launch the front half ofXiaophisand I really want to see that skull ! I only hope it is a sister as well . "
The dating of these specimens was possible thanks to tiny zircon trapped in the amber . By analyse the amount of lead in these minerals compared to Uranium , researcher can establish when they formed .
