Like mammals and birds, snakes diversified rapidly during the Cenozoic era, resulting in the nearly 4,000 species that we see today.Ī sampling of snake diversity. The K-Pg mass extinction event 66 million years ago – during which 75% of species, including all non-avian dinosaurs, went extinct – marked the beginning of the Cenozoic era and opened a myriad of empty niches for the surviving species to exploit. The remarkable diversification of mammals and birds after the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is well known but what happened to the snakes? According to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Michael Grundler at the University of California, Los Angeles and Daniel Rabosky at the University of Michigan, snakes experienced a similarly spectacular burst of evolution from unassuming insectivorous ancestors to diverse lineages that included the newly available birds, fish and small mammals in their diets. Sudden burst of evolution 66 million years ago expanded snake diets and put vertebrates on the menu. Credit: John David Curlis, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. A blunt-headed tree snake (Imantodes inornatus) eating its way through a batch of treefrog eggs.
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