Tale of two reptiles

It then took years of negotiations with the Indian Government before the snake (Sanajeh indicus) could be taken to Michigan and analyzed. “What emerged was extraordinary—an egg and a chain

of coiled snake bones with a skull. We hardly have good snake skeletons,” Wilson said. The Michigan University with gsi published the find in PLoS Biology on March 2, 2010. The study opens a

world for palaeontologists, ecologists, and enthusiasts of an era when mammoth creatures roamed the planet. Most of all, it provides insight into the ancient food chain that could help

clear the enigma surrounding the evolution of snakes; they are thought to have appeared towards the tail-end of the dinosaurs’ epic reign. Modern boas and pythons are notorious for their

expandable mouths allowing them to consume prey shockingly bigger than their heads. This is because their jaw joints are positioned well behind their skulls. S indicus had a smaller mouth.

“Its jaws would have allowed Sanajeh to wriggle, mouth first, over a struggling prey in a side-to-side motion depicting oral mobility familiar to anyone squeezing into a tight pair of

jeans,” said Jason Head, biologist from University of Toronto in Canada who led the study. Neither did Sanajeh have the fixed skulls of primitive snakes, nor could its mouth open as wide as

today’s boas. “It must be a connecting link,” said Shanan Peters, geologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in usa and co-author of the study. “It points to an interesting

evolutionary strategy for snakes to eat large prey,” said Wilson.