The oldest cobra lived in the Egyptian Fayoum Oasis 37 million years ago

The study of cold-blooded animals is very important because it completes the riddle of the ancient climate. The connection of these animals with the environment and climate was very great, and therefore, by revealing them, it gives a more accurate picture of the climate of Egypt and its surroundings in those times.

An international research team was able to uncover a variety of fossils of reptiles that lived in Egypt about 37 million years ago, northeast of Lake Qarun in the Egyptian Fayoum Governorate, which contributes to achieving a more accurate understanding of the country's climate and its surroundings at that time immemorial.

The study , which was published on February 16 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is led by Egyptian researcher Marwa Al-Harith, a teaching assistant in the Department of Zoology at Alexandria University and a member of the Mansoura University Center for Vertebrate Paleontology and lead author of the study.

Caudal vertebrae of a reninotite (Marwa al-Harith)

For a long time, Al-Harith has been fond of studying reptiles, and this interest coincides with a severe scarcity in the production of scientific research for a class called squamous plants in the continent of Africa, which are reptiles whose body is surrounded by scales emanating from the outer skin layer such as snakes and lizards, which prompted her and her team to study this range.

In a statement to Al Jazeera Net via e-mail, Al-Harith said, "In this study, we are particularly interested in a specific type of lizard, which is limbless worm lizards, as well as modern snakes such as the Egyptian cobra, the horned snake, the azure, wall snakes and the tarsha, which have fangs that depend on predation on the jaws, Not a contemporary."

Precious reveal

During the years 2017 and 2018, Al-Harith began her journey with a special team of Dr. Hisham Salam, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American University and Mansoura University, to study separate areas, including the vicinity of Lake Qarun. There, the team found fossils of eight bony vertebrae ranging in length and width from several millimeters to one centimeter.

According to the new study, after an examination that lasted several years, it was found that one of these paragraphs refers to the great-grandfather of modern snakes, which is the oldest snake of this group in the entire African continent.

The study also revealed the existence of another, no less important snake, the "Reninot", named after the ancient Egyptian goddess of nutrition and harvest, who owned a cobra's head, and the cobra was placed on the king's crown to protect it.

In addition to these two snakes, the study also recorded the monitoring of the largest and largest worm lizard in history, at the fossil level and at the level of contemporary animals, with a size that may reach twice the huge lizards of the giant lizards that live in Africa and Asia now.

The work team is excavating in an area north-east of Lake Qarun in the Egyptian governorate of Fayoum (Marwa Al-Harith)

Marwa Al-Harith said in a statement to Al-Jazeera Net, "The great ancestor of snake fossils that was found in Egypt 37 million years ago was also found in India 54 million years ago," referring to a connection that may have occurred between Asia (specifically India) and Africa during that period.

Deep migrations

The study concludes that this means cases of migration of the ancestors of snakes that started from India and reached Egypt. Al-Harith says that the migration took place through floating forests, meaning that part of a forest on one of the coasts of India separated with its animals and any forms of life and ran with the water to another area. The animals lived there.

"This idea was recorded before for the movement of mammals, but we know that reptiles are very affected by the climate, and even one degree Celsius is enough to cause a collapse in their lives, so previous scientific research did not imagine the occurrence of these migrations for reptiles, but our study in more than one detection is likely to occur." Al-Harith adds.

Marwa Al-Harith doing the examination in the field north-east of Lake Qarun in the Egyptian Fayoum Governorate (Marwa Al-Harith)

In general, according to the new study, the study of cold-blooded animals is very important because it completes the riddle of the ancient climate, because the association of these animals with the environment and climate was very great, and therefore, by revealing them, it gives a more accurate picture of the climate of Egypt and its surroundings in those times.

Al-Harith and her team hope that what they started in the study of these rare fossils of reptiles will continue, and a day will come when an Egyptian tree of fossils of this type will be formed that explains its history in that region rich in natural bounties of the world, which helps us to better understand the environments of life in those deep periods, which is also what It will benefit us by extension in understanding the future of this planet!