Unique fossil skeleton found: a beetle in a lizard in a snake

A unique 48-million-year-old fossil skeleton of a snake was unearthed in the Messel Pit Fossil Site in Germany, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a fossil snake that ate a lizard that ate a beetle. So, not only is the snake a fossil, but so is the lizard and the beetle – almost fully preserved.

A lizard – a Geiseltaliellus maarius – ate a beetle and then a 41-inch (104cm) snake ate the lizard. The snake – a Palaeophython fischeri – also also died soon afterwards. The researchers assume that the snake died ‘no more than one to two days’ after consuming the lizard, because the lizard is excellently preserved, and then the snake sank to the bottom of the Messel Lake where it fossilised.

There are other fossil skeletons that show the stomach contents – such as leaves and grapes – but there is only one other three-part sequence fossil of the food chain, and it’s an ancient shark.

Krister Smith of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum Frankfurt said that the fossil was found in 2009 when researchers recovered a plate from the pit that shows an almost fully preserved snake. The findings were published in the journal Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments in August 2016.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/09/08/rare-fossil-captures-snake-that-ate-lizard-that-ate-beetle.html

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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