A perfectly preserved burrow of fossilized snakes shows that the reptiles have been social creatures for almost 40 million years, says a new research paper co-authored by a University of Alberta paleontologist. It's well known that snakes today gather in burrows for all kinds of reasons, including breeding and surviving cold temperatures by piling together to maintain their body temperature. But new research on a fossil found almost 50 years ago provides a rare glimpse at the deep roots of that behaviour.
"We expect this out of mammals, of course, but we don't go looking for it in the fossil record for reptiles," said Michael Caldwell, a University of Alberta professor and co-author of a new paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. The fossil in question was a 1976 discovery of three "beautiful, articulated" specimens of boa-type snakes found together in a burrow in Wyoming. The fossil hasn't been properly researched until now.
Caldwell said the find was rare. Scientists are usually limited to studying isolated fossil snake vertebrae, "and we don't know what part of the snake they've come from." In contrast, these fossilized snakes had almost completely preserved vertebral columns and skulls.
Alberta paleontologists studying rare horse and camel fossils Weird ancient tree from before dinosaurs found in Canadian quarry Researchers speculate the Wyoming burrow could have been flooded, filled with sediment and fossilized the three snakes in it together, .