Four-legged Fossil Suggests Snakes Evolved From Burrowing Ancestors (1 of 7) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Four-legged Fossil Suggests Snakes Evolved From Burrowing Ancestors (1 of 7)

Caption

The four-legged snake Tetrapodophis amplectus subdues a gondwanatherian mammal. The scene is set in an Early Cretaceous tropical forest in Gondwana. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the July 24, 2015, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by D.M. Martill at University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, UK, and colleagues was titled, "A four-legged snake from the Early Cretaceous of Gondwana."

Credit

[Credit: Julius T. Cstonyi]

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