Dehradun: Scientists have spotted an almost 35 million years old rare snake fossil of a Madtsoiidae snake from the molasse deposits of Ladakh Himalayas. The discovery for the first time indicates the prevalence of such snakes in the subcontinent for a much longer time than previously thought. The Madtsoiidae snake fossil belonged to the late Oligocene ( part of the Tertiary Period in the Cenozoic Era, and lasted from about 33.7 to 23.8 million years ago) of the molasse deposits of Ladakh Himalaya.
The newly described specimen is now housed in the repository of Wadia Institute, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology, here.
Madtsoiidae is an extinct group of medium-sized to gigantic snakes, firstly appeared during the late Cretaceous and mostly distributed in the Gondwanan landmasses, although, their Cenozoic record is extremely scarce. From the fossil record, the whole group disappeared in the mid-Paleogene across most Gondwanan continents except for Australia where it survived with its last known taxon Wonambi till late Pleistocene.
Dr Ningthoujam Premjit Singh (corresponding author), Dr Ramesh Kumar Sehgal, and Abhishek Pratap Singh from Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, India in association with Dr Rajeev Patnaik and Wasim Abass Wazir from Panjab University Chandigarh; Dr Navin Kumar and Piyush Uniyal from Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, and Dr Andrej Čerňanský of Comenius University Slovakia reported the discovery for the first time.
The occurrence of Madtsoiidae from the Oligocene of Ladakh indicates their continuity at least to the end of the Paleogene (geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago). The research published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology shows that the members of this group were successful in this subcontinent for a much longer time than previously thought. The global climatic shifts and the prominent biotic reorganization across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (which correlates to the European Grande Coupure), did not cause the extinction of this important group of snakes in India.
– global bihari bureau
