The oldest snake ever discovered in Amber Forest

Snakes have been slipping into the forest for nearly a hundred million years. This is one of the revelations discovered in Myanmar, where a snake was found trapped in amber and dated back to the Cretaceous period 99 million years ago.

This is the oldest snake ever found, the first ever fossilized. The international team of scientists, who published his findings in Science Advances, also describe the discovery of "a shed skin fragment interpreted as a snake." The joint discovery, which is also a newly discovered species, is a significant addition in understanding the history of Southeast Asia and snakes as a whole.

"It's spectacular to have one," says Michael Caldwell, co-author and professor of biology at the University of Alberta, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Caldwell joined other scientists from Canada, as well as China and Australia, in the study.

Ryan McKellar / Royal Saskatchewan Museum

On the forest floor 99 million a few years ago, a baby snake was trapped in a drop of sap that fell from a tree. Somewhere there, he lost his head, and the sap collected other elements, litter from the forest, including "insects and plants and poop of cockroach", according to Caldwell. But the snake remained, and was eventually trapped and protected in sandstone deposits inside a state that became known as Burma and is now known as Myanmar.

"There are literally tens of thousands of these little amber spots that congregate like plastic debris on the edge of a beach and cover themselves with sandy beaches "Caldwell told the CBC

China University of Geosciences

Fast forward to 2016 when Chinese paleontologist Lida Xing of the China Geoscience University received a phone call from a group of Chinese fossil hunters with an extraordinary promise: a snake baby perfectly preserved in amber. By a stroke of luck, when Xing received the call was en route to Canada to collaborate with Caldwell on an ongoing reptile study

Xiaophis myanmarensisthe name of the new snake means "snake of Dawn of Myanmar "and is also a tribute to Xiao Jia, an amber specialist who was part of the first team of fossil hunters. His specimen donation to the Dexu Institute of Paleontology in Chaozhou, China, allowed scientists to study it.

At 1.8 inches, headless for unknown reasons, this is not much different from the baby snakes that we see today in the area. The discovery shows "a greater ecological diversity among the first snakes than we thought," says the study.

The mechanisms of snakes have fascinated humanity for thousands of years, few animals are intertwined in the cultural fabric of the globe. More recently, a teenager asked if they farted and spawned the best-selling book on Amazon.

Source: The progress of science via Gizmodo