Pythons Slithered Through Europe Before Coiling Around the World
The oldest known fossils of the predatory snakes were found at a German site, changing the snake family tree.
A fossil of a python found in Germany, coated in ammonium chloride to enhance visibility of structures.Credit.Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
By Katherine Kornei
Dec. 20, 2020
From 20-foot anacondas to species that can comfortably fit on a quarter, snakes slither across much of the world today. That’s in part because they’re remarkably good at adapting to new environments for instance, the Burmese python, native to Southeast Asia, is thriving in Florida’s Everglades National Park. Now, researchers have analyzed four fossilized python skeletons unearthed in Germany part of a region that’s currently free of the scaly creatures and rewritten the snake family trees.
The completely preserved fossils were just under a metre long.
Today the snakes could grow up to six metres in length and are found throughout Africa, southern and southeast Asia, and Australia.
Krister Smith from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum found the snakes, with his colleague Hussam Zaher of the University in São Paulo.
The head and body of the Messel python are almost completely preserved.(Hessian State Museum Darmstadt)
Mr Smith said the finding was significant because it indicates pythons actually evolved in Europe. The geographic origin of pythons is still not clear, he said.
Messelopython freyi. Image credit: Senckenberg Research Institute.
The newly-identified python species lived in what is now Germany, approximately 47.6 million years ago (Eocene period).
Named
Messelopython freyi, the ancient snake is the earliest-known member of the superfamily Pythonoidea.
“The geographic origin of pythons is still not clear,” said co-author Dr. Krister Smith, a paleontologist in the Department of Messel Research and Mammalogy at the Senckenberg Research Institute and the Institute for Ecology, Diversity and Evolution at the Goethe University Frankfurt.
“According to our findings, these snakes already occurred in Europe at the time of the Eocene, over 47 million years ago,” said lead author Dr. Hussam Zaher, a paleontologist in the Museu de Zoologia at the Universidade de São Paulo.
Messelopython freyi remains were recovered from a quarry near Darmstadt
The head and body of Messelopython freyi are almost completely preserved
Scientists have identified the world s earliest python from 47 million-year-old fossils recovered from a quarry in southwest Germany.
Remains of the new python species, called Messelopython freyi, were discovered in Messel Pit, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near the German city of Darmstadt.
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Researchers report in a new paper that the completely preserved species had a length of just over three feet (one metre).
M. freyi, both a new species and a new genus, is the oldest known fossil record of a python anywhere in the world, researchers say.
| UPDATED: 17:50, Wed, Dec 16, 2020
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The newly discovered species of snake was found by palaeontologists excavating a disused German quarry known as the Messel Pit. The UNESCO World Heritage Site, which sits about 22 miles outside of Frankfurt, has seen a wealth of fossil discoveries since the early 20th century. Researchers from the University in Sao Paolo in Brazil, Senckenberg Research Institute and State Museum of Natural History in Germany have presented their latest discovery in the journal Biology Letters.