The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also nearly killed off all of Earth’s lizards and snakes, study claims
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | December 11, 2012 17:21
Huge numbers of lizards and snakes were wiped out by the asteroid which killed off the dinosaurs when it struck Earth 65million years ago, a study claims.
The massive impact off the coast of Mexico which led to the great extinction also wiped out up to 83 per cent of the planet’s reptiles, scientists now believe.
Experts who studied the fossil record of lizards and snakes in North America found evidence that the asteroid cataclysm was more devastating than previously thought.
‘The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,’ said lead scientist Dr Nicholas Longrich, from Yale University in the U.S.
‘But it basically cut this broad swathe across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.’
A remarkable range of reptile species lived during the last days of the dinosaurs, said the scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They included tiny lizards and others up to six feet long which hunted prey in the swamplands of what is now Montana.
One snake the size of a boa constrictor was large enough to take the eggs and young of many dinosaur species.
‘Lizards and snakes rivalled the dinosaurs in terms of diversity, making it just as much an “age of the lizards” as an “age of the dinosaurs”,’ said Dr Longrich.
Among the most diverse lizard branches to vanish was the Polyglyphanodontia, a large family including up to 40 per cent of all lizards then living in North America.
While examining the fossil collections, the scientists came across an unnamed member of this group which they called Obamadon gracilis.
The name is derived from US president Barack Obama and the Latin for tooth and slender.
Obamadon measured less than a foot long and probably ate insects.
Survivors of the asteroid strike evolved into the 9,000 species of lizards and snakes alive today.
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