Artist's conception of two of the ancient snakes. (Julius Csotonyi)
The January 31st, 2015 edition of Quirks & Quarks has a story on the oldest known snake fossils. The four new fossil specimens were found in various places, two in England and one each in Portugal and Colorado (in the US). Originally thought to be lizards, new research shows all four represent new species with ages ranging from 143 to 167 million years ago. That pushes back the oldest snake by an astounding 70 million years! The original paper from Nature Communications can be found here.
