Sanajeh
| Sanajeh | ||||||||||||
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Sanajeh indicus in a sauropod nest with eggs and a cub, live reconstruction . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Maastrichtium ( Upper Cretaceous ) | ||||||||||||
| 67.5 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Sanajeh | ||||||||||||
| Wilson , Mohabey , Peters & Head , 2010 | ||||||||||||
Sanajeh ( Sanskrit : Sanaj = old; jeh = mouth) is an extinct genus of snakes from the Upper Cretaceous , whose fossil remains were found together with eggs and a young titanosaur in the Lameta Formation in the Indian state of Gujarat . Since the fossils were found in layers just below the Dekkan Trapp , which formed about 66 million years ago,their age is estimated at 67.5 million years.
The holotype consists of an almost completely preserved skull, the lower jaw and a total of 72 vertebrae and ribs, which are preserved in five anatomically preserved individual sections.
description
The length of Sanajeh is estimated to be around 3.5 meters based on the 9.5 centimeter long skull. It did not yet have the highly agile skull of modern snakes, which enables the devouring of prey that is much larger than its mouth diameter, but rather lizard-like jaws.
nutrition
The skeleton of Sanajeh was found in close association with three sauropod eggs of the dinosaur parataxon Megaloolithus dhorendungriensis and a partially preserved sauropod nestling . The snake's spine comprises three sides of a broken egg, from which the nestling probably hatched shortly before. The other two eggs are intact. The nestling must belong to the Titanosauria group , as it was the only sauropod line that still lived on the Indian subcontinent in the Upper Cretaceous.
Sanajeh probably ate dinosaur nests, but was unable to eat the large sauropod eggs (16 cm in diameter) because her mouth was too small and she had not yet had any adaptations to an oophage way of life, e.g. B. the Indian egg snake . However, Sanajeh could also have opened eggs by crushing them with her body, as today's pointed head python ( Loxocemus bicolor ) does with eggs from the olive ridged turtle ( Lepidochelys olivacea ).
Systematics
Sanajeh belongs to the Madtsoiidae , an extinct snake family to which the Australian genus Wonambi is assigned. The systematic position of Sanajeh within the snakes is illustrated by the following cladogram:
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literature
- Jeffrey A. Wilson, Dhananjay M. Mohabey, Shanan E. Peters, Jason J. Head: Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs by a New Snake from the Late Cretaceous of India. In: PLoS Biol . Vol. 8, No. 3, 2010, e1000322, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pbio.1000322 .
Web links
- ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2010) Anaconda 'Meets' Jurassic Park': Fossil Snake from India Fed on Hatchling Dinosaurs