80-million-year-old snake fossil sheds light on why lizards lost their limbs and started slithering

The new fossil of _Tametara mirim_ reframes how we understand snake evolution. Agustin Martinelli Snakes are everywhere in our legends and mythology. Yet for most of us, our blood runs cold whenever we encounter these strangely undulating, scaly tubes of muscle slithering through the leaf litter. The loss of an arm or leg poses a challenge. Yet snakes do perfectly well without all four of them. This makes them suspect. It also leaves us unable to fathom how this radical transition produced one…