Ancestors of cobras DID NOT originate in Africa but belonged to...
Representational image of snake.
It was earlier believed by scientists that Elapoidea - which is the superfamily of cobras, coral snakes and mambas - first existed in Africa.
However, the hypothesis was proved wrong when scientists discovered the fossil of a file snake in Tanzaniawhich belonged to the Oligocene Epoch (33.9 million to 23 million years ago).
The snake was found to be the oldest relative which belongs to the Elapoidea group as per the fossil record.
In the new research, which was published in the journalRoyal Society Open Science, the researchers carried out the fossils and genetic analysis of snakes from other regions to discover that these snakes along with snakes from the superfamily Colubroidea originated in Asia.
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"The reason for the uncertainty was mostly because of the lack of understanding of how these different species are related to one another," said lead authorJeffrey Weinell, who is an evolutionary biologist and postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, while speaking to Live Science.
How did scientists carry out the research?
The comprehensive genetic data related to the group was never compiled by scientists.
"I was interested in inferring the tree of life for this group, which predicts the evolutionary relationships, and then using that tree of life estimate plus information about modern species to estimate where the ancestor of this group lived," he said.
In the latest study, Weinell and his colleagues looked into 3,128 locations on the genomes of 65 species of Elapoidea to understand how all the snakes were related.
In the earlier fossil record, these Asian ancestors were not mentioned probably because of the conditions in which they evolved.
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"Tropical Asia is not the best for preserving fossils because of the climate," said Weinell.
According to the study, these snakes moved from Asia to Africa and their descendants dispersed into Europe, Australasia and America in different waves.
In every continent, there are 700 snake species as of now, except Antarctica and other islands. The descendants of these early snakes have also colonised even the seas.
(With inputs from agencies)