Four fossilized snakes have been found, representing a previously unknown species from the 38 million-year-old boa family. These finds have given paleontologists a unique perspective on the social behavior of reptiles and hint at the evolution of the animals’ contemporary counterparts.
Most likely, when you think about snakes, you don’t picture gregarious animals. With the exception of garter snakes, which are known to congregate in hundreds in a place known as a hibernaculum during the winter, the majority of snakes are lone performers.
But the finding of a fossil of four snakes huddled together in what appears to be a hibernaculum, which has been well preserved, has not only revealed a new species but also the first concrete proof of social behavior in reptiles in the fossil record.
Professor Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist from the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta in Canada and the study’s principal author, remarked, “This is really unusual for reptiles.” “Of the almost 15,000 different kinds of reptile species alive today, none of them hibernate in the way that garter snakes do.”
Garter snakes look for an underground building, such as an abandoned animal burrow or a man-made structure, such as a house, to utilize as a hibernaculum when the weather starts to chill. There, hundreds, even thousands of garter snakes will congregate for safety until spring arrives, at which point they will leave their comfortable nest. Well, and other snake species have discovered what the garter snakes do in the winter and occasionally encroach on the hibernaculum in order to take advantage of the protection it provides.
The discovery of the four preserved ancient snakes huddled together provided the researchers with information about the social behavior of the reptiles and suggested that the hibernaculum practiced by modern garter snakes was an adaptation meant to assist them survive the winter months.
According to Caldwell, “They can’t regulate their body temperature, so they need to find a way to conserve as much heat as they can through the winter, and they do this by forming these big masses.
The fact that these individuals were articulated—that is, that they were discovered whole, with their vertebral bones in the correct order—was another feature that distinguished them from many others. Caldwell says that’s not typical.
“There are probably, in the world’s museum collections, nearly a million disarticulated snake vertebrae,” he stated. “They are easy to find. But finding the whole snake? That’s rare.”
Hibernophis breithaupti, a previously undiscovered burrowing species from the boa family, or Boidae, was identified by the researchers after analyzing the specimens’ distinctive anatomical traits. Translation: “broad head” is the meaning of the German word breithaupti. Because of the size difference between one and the other snakes, the researchers were able to observe the species at several developmental phases.
As for the Boidae evolution in general, Caldwell said, “we learn quite a bit more.” “It seems that they probably started out as relatively small-bodied snakes, which is interesting.”
The fossils were discovered in the western region of the US state of Wyoming. This suggests that the northern and more central regions of North America may have played a crucial role in the evolution of Hibernophis breithaupti during its slithering period approximately 38 million years ago. The location of the fossils and their nearly perfect preservation lead the researchers to believe that floods caused the snakes’ deaths.
According to Caldwell, “they were preserved in a very unusual circumstance, geologically speaking.” “Fossilization is a rough process. You need exactly the right conditions to preserve something.”
