Snakes and Fossils

In 2010 Jeffrey Wilson and colleagues described a fossil snake found in the Western Indian state of Gujarat outside the village of Dholi Dungri. That snake is known as "Ancient Gape" or, in Sanskrit, Sanajeh indicus (indicus coming from the Latin meaning from India). The snake was discovered coiled around sauropod eggs, with an additional 50 cm long sauropod body found nearby. This Late Cretaceous snake, a Madtsoiid or Gondwanan clade snake, is thought to have regularly preyed on sauropods because of this discovery. Vertebrae, ribs, and a very rare but very fortunate nearly complete cranium including the lower jaw were discovered in this fossil. In extant snakes the head is extremely loosely connected together, as it was in Sanajeh. Even now these modern snakes are rarely found intact because of these loose connections. The fact that Sanajeh was discovered with a nearly complete skull and jaws is remarkable, and, as we can see in the line drawing of the fossil, uncovering this find must have been fairly fantastic.

From Wilson et al., 2010