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The spectacularly well preserved fossilized remains of the oldest python known has been unearthed in the Lagerstätte oil shale quarry known as the Messel Pit, located to the south of the German city of Frankfurt in the southwestern part of the country.
The discovery of three different specimens are approximately 47.6 million years old, near the end of the Lutetian stage of the Middle Eocene epoch. The snake itself has been named Messelopython freyi and represents both a new genus and species. The genus name is a combination of both where fossil was discovered (Messel), and the snake’s family, python or 'pythonidae', with the species name honoring a leading German paleontologist, Eberhard Frey, renowned for his studies of fossil reptiles.
Messelopython freyi was roughly a meter in length (3.2') making it rather small compared to extant pythons, which can exceed more than six meters long (19.6'), and making them some of the largest snakes known today.
Today, pythons are native to the tropics and subtropics of the Eastern Hemisphere, primarily in Africa, Southern and Southeast Asia, and Australia. But this discovery suggests that the pythons originally arose in Europe.
I should note that the Mexican burrowing python is not, as the article implies, a python but is instead a python-like snake belonging to an entirely different taxonomic family, Loxocemus (and is its only member).
Also the article's list of fossils uncovered at Messel leaves out one of the more significant discoveries Darwinius masillae (a.k.a, "Ida"), and I should add that the mating turtles represent the only example in the fossil record of vertebrates mating. A cool slideshow on the Messel pit itself and a few of the stunning pictures of the fossils discovered there can be found HERE
Here is the abstract from Pythons in the Eocene of Europe reveal a much older divergence of the group in sympatry with boas. The entire paper is available by clicking the hyperlink.
The discovery of three different specimens are approximately 47.6 million years old, near the end of the Lutetian stage of the Middle Eocene epoch. The snake itself has been named Messelopython freyi and represents both a new genus and species. The genus name is a combination of both where fossil was discovered (Messel), and the snake’s family, python or 'pythonidae', with the species name honoring a leading German paleontologist, Eberhard Frey, renowned for his studies of fossil reptiles.
Messelopython freyi was roughly a meter in length (3.2') making it rather small compared to extant pythons, which can exceed more than six meters long (19.6'), and making them some of the largest snakes known today.
Today, pythons are native to the tropics and subtropics of the Eastern Hemisphere, primarily in Africa, Southern and Southeast Asia, and Australia. But this discovery suggests that the pythons originally arose in Europe.
I should note that the Mexican burrowing python is not, as the article implies, a python but is instead a python-like snake belonging to an entirely different taxonomic family, Loxocemus (and is its only member).
Also the article's list of fossils uncovered at Messel leaves out one of the more significant discoveries Darwinius masillae (a.k.a, "Ida"), and I should add that the mating turtles represent the only example in the fossil record of vertebrates mating. A cool slideshow on the Messel pit itself and a few of the stunning pictures of the fossils discovered there can be found HERE
Here is the abstract from Pythons in the Eocene of Europe reveal a much older divergence of the group in sympatry with boas. The entire paper is available by clicking the hyperlink.
Abstract
Extant large constrictors, pythons and boas, have a wholly allopatric distribution that has been interpreted largely in terms of vicariance in Gondwana. Here, we describe a stem pythonid based on complete skeletons from the early-middle Eocene of Messel, Germany. The new species is close in age to the divergence of Pythonidae from North American Loxocemus and corroborates a Laurasian origin and dispersal of pythons. Remarkably, it existed in sympatry with the stem boid Eoconstrictor. These occurrences demonstrate that neither dispersal limitation nor strong competitive interactions were decisive in structuring biogeographic patterns early in the history of large, hyper-macrostomatan constrictors and exemplify the synergy between phylogenomic and palaeontological approaches in reconstructing past distributions.
Extant large constrictors, pythons and boas, have a wholly allopatric distribution that has been interpreted largely in terms of vicariance in Gondwana. Here, we describe a stem pythonid based on complete skeletons from the early-middle Eocene of Messel, Germany. The new species is close in age to the divergence of Pythonidae from North American Loxocemus and corroborates a Laurasian origin and dispersal of pythons. Remarkably, it existed in sympatry with the stem boid Eoconstrictor. These occurrences demonstrate that neither dispersal limitation nor strong competitive interactions were decisive in structuring biogeographic patterns early in the history of large, hyper-macrostomatan constrictors and exemplify the synergy between phylogenomic and palaeontological approaches in reconstructing past distributions.
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