They find in amber the first baby snake of the age of the dinosaurs

A fossilized individual with 99 million years is considered the oldest found in a forest. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences were responsible for finding it in Southeast Asia.

This is the first time that a baby snake is discovered in such good conservation conditions. Through its conservation in amber, this 99 million year old individual is the fossil of the oldest recorded snake in a forest. The authors of the discovery, paleontologists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences named this species Xiaophis myanmarensis .

This fossil is only 5 centimeters long. It is about 100 million years old.

The description they made of it, recently published in Science Advances, is that it is related to some modern snake groups in Southeast Asia. "It is not known whether these primitive snakes were viviparous, something usual in modern snakes, or oviparous, but depending on their size and stage of development, it was a (newborn)" a warned co-author Michael Caldwell finds in National Geographic, reptile fossils expert at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada

Another discovery made at the same place was a piece of Amber containing a probable piece of snakeskin with dark, light bands on the scales. This discovery, which belongs to another more modern species, has not been confirmed as an animal skin. However, its size, shape and layout seem to suggest that this is the case. If that is the case, experts say, this would be the first piece of snake skin kept in amber.

In Caldwell's words, "their scales are organized as one would expect to see in a snake or lizard, in diagonal rows". In this particular specimen, it looks more like a snake, it's partly the shape of diamond scales: Most lizards do not show this kind of diamond shape nor the pattern of overlapping in the scales. "