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Trilobites
In 2016, Lida Xing painted the amber markets of Myanmar when a merchant lured her to her stand with what he said was the skin of a crocodile trapped in amber. Dr. Xing inspected the specimen through his honey-colored envelope and noticed the diamond-shaped pattern of his scales, he realized that what he was holding was actually a snake skin 99 million years old Dr. Xing, who is a paleontologist from the University Chinese geoscience in Beijing, had already recovered a feathered dinosaur tail and a baby bird in the amber m arkets. But he said that hundreds of thousands of pieces of amber discovered in the area, no one had ever found a snake.
He bought snake skin and held a meeting with Michael Caldwell, paleontologist at the University of Alberta. . A few minutes before Dr. Xing boarded for his flight to Canada, another colleague alerted him of another recently discovered snake specimen that was more surprising than the first: a baby snake was buried in a piece of silver amber.
"The fossil is the first baby snake and the oldest snake to be found yet," said Dr. Xing. Prior to this discovery, paleontologists had not discovered a fossilized snake baby even in the fossil record, Dr. Caldwell said.
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Dr. Xing and Dr. Caldwell reported their findings from both specimens Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The work provides insight into the evolution of snakes, their early anatomical development and their prehistoric spread throughout the world.
Only the lower half of the sinuous body of the baby snake has been preserved in amber, which is a fossilized resin. Because the skull was gone, the people who found the fossil thought that the tiny creature was either a centipede or a centipede.
But a more thorough inspection revealed his bones. And thanks to the use of a micro-CT scanner and a synchrotron, scientists confirmed that the specimen was a baby snake, a new species that they called Xiaophis myanmarensis. . It looks like existing species of pipe snakes and grass.
Researchers determined that the fossilized snake was an embryo or newborn based on the development of its spinal cord. Like modern baby snakes, the preserved baby had tiny vertebral bones, but a large tube of the spinal cord, according to Dr. Caldwell. This is a telltale sign that the snake was still developing, as well as the first direct evidence that the observed developmental processes in the spine of a baby snake were established there are at least 100 million dies. Years and have remained relatively unchanged since then.
The researchers could not say whether or not the shed snake skin belonged to the same species as the baby snake.
Scientists do not know where snakes come from and how they spread around the world. The new specimens offer tracks for a potential pathway of their prehistoric movement around the planet, Dr. McKellar said.
Some 100 million years ago, when snakes became trapped in tree resin, Myanmar was part of an island migrating between Asia current and Australia. This island eventually floated up to the coast of Laurasia, a supercontinent that then included Europe and present-day Asia. "
Nicholas St. Fleur is a science journalist who writes on archeology, paleontology, space and other topics … He joined the Times in 2015. Prior to that, he was associate editor at The Atlantic. @ scifleur • Facebook
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