Destruction is never the end, in fact it is the harbinger of change and creation. This holds true for the present day species of snakes as they evolved from just a few survivors who lived through the catastrophic event of giant asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous, which virtually wiped out all living beings including dinosaurs.
According to an article in sciencedaily.com, this is what a new study suggests whose authors describe the extinction event which was devastating as a type of “creative destruction”, as it enabled and allowed snakes to move to new places which were earlier held by their competitors.
Published in Nature Communications the findings depict that these reptiles began to diversify when the extra-terrestrial event took place killing dinosaurs and other creatures. Today there are nearly 4,000 living species of snakes.
Boa (Pic. Courtesy Twitter/@SahilBloom)
Led by University of Bath scientists, the team which did this research includes collaborators from Bristol, Cambridge and Germany. They constructed the snake evolution by using fossils and also understanding and analysing differences between modern snakes. This investigation led them to the time from where the snakes evolved.
The investigation results reflect that all the present day snakes go back to those handful species who survived 66 million years ago when the asteroid hit the earth wiping out many creatures.
Providing the reasoning for snakes’ survival during and after the asteroid hit, the scientists stated their ability to shelter underground and survive for long time without food, helped them. Following this period, the snakes moved to new niches, new habitats and new continents as their competitors including the dinosaurs and Cretaceous snakes were not around.
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Now was the stage and point when the reptile began to modify and by using new habitats and new prey to its benefit went on to produce lineages like vipers, cobras, garter snakes, pythons, and boas. exploiting new habitats, and new prey. It was only after the extinction of dinosaurs that modern snake diversification took place including the tree snakes, sea snakes, venomous vipers and cobras, and huge constrictors like boas and pythons.
Their vertebrae also underwent a change as shown by the fossils which was as a result of disappearance of Cretaceous lineages and appearance of new species, including the giant sea snakes.
On this aspect, Dr Catherine Klein observed: "It's remarkable, because not only are they surviving an extinction that wipes out so many other animals, but within a few million years they are innovating, using their habitats in new ways.”
Klein is the lead author of the study and Bath graduate and she works at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany.
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Around this time the snakes started spreading across the world. Initially, they were confined to the Southern Hemisphere but later they appeared in Asia following the extinction.
The corresponding author of the study Dr. Nick Longrich, who is from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath averred: "Our research suggests that extinction acted as a form of 'creative destruction'- by wiping out old species, it allowed survivors to exploit the gaps in the ecosystem, experimenting with new lifestyles and habitats. This seems to be a general feature of evolution — it's the periods immediately after major extinctions where we see evolution at its most wildly experimental and innovative.”
Longrich added: "The destruction of biodiversity makes room for new things to emerge and colonize new landmasses. Ultimately life becomes even more diverse than before."
From the present study on snakes, it emerges that catastrophes – severe, rapid, and global environmental disruptions – play a vital and pivotal role in evolutionary change.
