{"id":4203,"date":"2006-04-19T18:56:53","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T00:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groonk.net\/blog\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2011-01-15T11:54:32","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T17:54:32","slug":"found-old-snake-fossil-with-legs-and-hips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/2006\/04\/found-old-snake-fossil-with-legs-and-hips\/","title":{"rendered":"FOUND: Old snake fossil with legs and hips"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"blocked\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"leggedsnake.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/images\/leggedsnake.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"187\" align=\"right\"\/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn9020-oldest-snake-fossil-shows-a-bit-of-leg.html\" class=\"external external_icon\">Sebastian Apesteguia at the Argentine Museum of Natural History and his team found the snake fossil in a terrestrial deposit in the Rio Negro province of north Patagonia, Argentina, in 2003. Unlike a handful of legged fossils found in marine deposits and identified as snakes over the past decade, the new fossil, named <em>Najash rionegrina<\/em>, has a well-defined sacrum supporting a pelvis and functional hind legs outside of its ribcage<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The creature&#8217;s skeletal structure suggests it was evolutionarily closer to its four-legged ancestor than previous fossils. And since the scientists found it in a terrestrial deposit, it is near certain that the animal lived on land.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This snake is an important addition because it is the first snake with a sacrum. This represents an intermediate morphology that has never before been seen,&#8221; says Hussam Zaher, curator of herpetology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, and part of the research team.<\/p>\n<p>The fossil was found in a deposit from the late Cretaceous period and Zaher says the snake is at least 90 million years old. &#8220;This fills an important morphological gap of information regarding the early evolution of snakes,&#8221; he says. <\/p><\/div>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn9020-oldest-snake-fossil-shows-a-bit-of-leg.html\" class=\"external external_icon\">new scientist<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sebastian Apesteguia at the Argentine Museum of Natural History and his team found the snake fossil in a terrestrial deposit in the Rio Negro province of north Patagonia, Argentina, in 2003. Unlike a handful of legged fossils found in marine deposits and identified as snakes over the past decade, the new fossil, named Najash rionegrina, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1406,116],"class_list":["post-4203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","tag-lost-and-found","tag-proof-of-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15168,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions\/15168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}