The fossil of a snake with four small legs has been identified by a UK professor during a visit to a German museum.
Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth discovered the snake while leading a group of students through the Bürgermeister Müller Museum in Solnhofen, Germany.
Martill was examining what appeared to be a fossil of a run-of-the-mill snake, labelled as "Unknown Fossil", before noting that the rock in which it was embedded had characteristics of the Brazilian Crato Formation, a site that dates to the early Cretaceous period. Snake fossils had been found in that period but never that location, according to National Geographic.
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Martill then noticed a pair of hind legs. Fossils have been found depicting snakes with stunted hind legs, and present-day boas and pythons still exhibit small spurs where legs once were.
"I looked even closer – and my jaw was already on the floor by now – and I saw that it had tiny little front legs! ... no snake has ever been found with four legs. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery," said Martill, who has named the reptile Tetrapodophis, meaning four-legged snake.
There are two competing theories about how today's slithering snakes evolved. The first holds that snakes first evolved in the ocean. The second hypothesis – which this new discovery seems to support – is that snakes evolved from burrowing lizards, which over time stretched their bodies and shirked their limbs to better manoeuvre their way through the ground.
Martill thinks that this snake killed its prey by constriction, like many present-day snakes do. "Why else have a really long body?" he says. He thinks that the snakes may have used their "strange, spoon-shaped feet" to restrain struggling prey – or unwilling mates – as they are too small to support the reptile's full body when walking.
But is this fossil even a snake? Michael Caldwell from the University of Alberta doesn't think so. He says that the Tetrapodophis lacks unique features in its spine and skull that would solidify a connection. "I think the specimen is important, but I do not know what it is," he says. "I might be wrong… I'm looking forward to visiting Solnhofen."
