48-million-year-old fossilized python sets new record for oldest known

The Messel python fossil is well preserved.

A multinational team of archaeologists published a report in the scientific journal Biology Letters on Wednesday (16), saying they studied a fossil unearthed in a fossil pit in southwest Germany and confirmed that it was a python that lived 48 million years ago.

The team said the discovery set a new record for the oldest known python fossil and helped the academic community understand where the modern python came from.

Krister Smith, a paleontologist at the Senckenberg Museum of Nature in Frankfurt, and Hussam Zaher, an archaeologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, studied the well-preserved fossil, named Messelopython freyi because it was unearthed at the Messel Pit in Darmstadt, Hesse.

The Messel python is only 1 meter long, much smaller than modern pythons that can reach 6 meters in length, and is an unprecedented species. Smith pointed out that the Messel pit was a lake in prehistoric times, so it is estimated that the Messel python was active in the middle of the Eocene, which is the beginning of the development of all modern animals, he pointed out that the discovery of the Messel python can understand the evolution of pythons in Europe, and is also a great leap forward in the study of the evolution of snakes.