Tetrapodophis, the four-legged snake
The 100 million year old Tetrapodophis amplectus is the world’s oldest and most primitive known snake. Some people dispute this identification. That’s alright. We stand by the work we did in the original Science paper describing the animal.
Honestly, I think they’re probably just jealous they don’t have the oldest and most primitive snake. It’s a pretty awesome discovery- I know I’d be jealous if someone else had found it..
But you don’t have to take my word for it- or anyone’s word for it. I’d encourage you to have a look at the anatomy, and compare it to snakes, and to mosasaurs, and make up your own mind- code it up in a matrix like the Gauthier et al. one. I don’t see the point in arguing further about it. Either I’m wrong, in which case I’m just making more of a fool of myself by arguing. Or I’m right, in which case, eventually, the evidence wins out. But that can sometimes take a surprisingly long time in science.
To that end, I’ve uploaded high-resolution version of the figures. A warning- the PDFs are very large; they haven’t been downsampled and include the original high-resolution photographs.
To reference:
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 4
Extended Data Figure 1
Extended Data Figure 2
Extended Data Figure 3
Extended Data Figure 4
Extended Data Figure 5
Extended Data Figure 6
Extended Data Figure 7
