by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | May 20, 2015 09:50am ET
Millions of years ago, the common ancestor of all living snakes — a long creature with tiny hind limbs as well as ankles and toes — could be found slithering over the damp soil of forests in search of soft-bodied prey, a new study finds.
In the first comprehensive reconstruction of ancestral snakes, the researchers analyzed the fossils, DNA and anatomy of 73 species of snake and lizard.
Their findings suggest that the most recent common ancestor of snakes was likely nocturnal, evolved on land and lived in the warm, damp forests of the Southern Hemisphere about 128 million years ago, they said.
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