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The snake that ate dinosaurs

Giant primitive snake found coiled in dino nest

The remains of a giant snake have been found inside a 67-million-year-old dinosaur nest, coiled around a crushed dinosaur egg and next to a hatchling titanosaur, according to Discovery News. This is the first known evidence of the feeding behaviour of a primitive snake, according to co-author Jason Head, paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga. “Sauropods laid their eggs in nests covering several hundred miles, so the newly hatched dinosaurs would have been like meatballs on a smorgasbord for the snakes,” he said. The fossils were first found in 1987, by dinosaur egg expert Dhananjay Mohabey from the Geological Survey of India. The eggs were in loose sand and covered by a thin layer of sediment, leading experts to believe the hatchling had just left the egg, a movement that attracted the snake. It seems a storm caused a sandy mudslide, burying the snake and remaining dino hatchlings while still alive; the parents, 70-foot-long titanosaur adults, weren’t present, but even if they were, it’s unlikely the giant plant-eating animals could have stopped a fast-moving snake. “This points to an interesting evolutionary strategy for primitive snakes to eat large prey by increasing their body size,” Head said. Two other snake-egg pairings were also found at the site in Gujarat, India.

Discovery

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