Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Sep 14;12(1):5335.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25136-y.

Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction

Catherine G Klein  1   2 , Davide Pisani  3 , Daniel J Field  4   5 , Rebecca Lakin  4 , Matthew A Wills  4 , Nicholas R Longrich  6
Affiliations

Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction

Catherine G Klein et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

Mass extinctions have repeatedly shaped global biodiversity. The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction caused the demise of numerous vertebrate groups, and its aftermath saw the rapid diversification of surviving mammals, birds, frogs, and teleost fishes. However, the effects of the K-Pg extinction on the evolution of snakes-a major clade of predators comprising over 3,700 living species-remains poorly understood. Here, we combine an extensive molecular dataset with phylogenetically and stratigraphically constrained fossil calibrations to infer an evolutionary timescale for Serpentes. We reveal a potential diversification among crown snakes associated with the K-Pg mass extinction, led by the successful colonisation of Asia by the major extant clade Afrophidia. Vertebral morphometrics suggest increasing morphological specialisation among marine snakes through the Paleogene. The dispersal patterns of snakes following the K-Pg underscore the importance of this mass extinction event in shaping Earth's extant vertebrate faunas.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Time-calibrated phylogeny of crown snakes based on the 42 fossil calibration set developed in this study, under a Bayesian Inference framework.
Green curves represent concatenated posterior age estimates for ingroup nodes using a skew-T and skew-Normal prior. Major clades discussed in the main text are shown on the right; Scolecoph., Scolecophidia; Am., Amerophidia. The K-Pg boundary is indicated by a red line and the Oligocene-Miocene boundary by a yellow line.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Principal component analysis of vertebral shape across different time bins, based on nine measurements, corrected for size.
The K-Pg boundary is indicated by a red line.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Reconstructed historical biogeography of crown snakes, applying the DIVAlike + J model from BioGeoBEARS.
Pies represent the likelihood of the presence in each geographic area for each node; squares indicate present-day geographic distributions of extant taxa. The K-Pg boundary is indicated by a red line and the Oligocene-Miocene boundary by a yellow line.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Barnosky AD, et al. Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived? Nature. 2011;471:51–57. doi: 10.1038/nature09678. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Longrich NR, Scriberas J, Wills MA. Severe extinction and rapid recovery of mammals across the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary, and the effects of rarity on patterns of extinction and recovery. J. Evol. Biol. 2016;29:1495–1512. doi: 10.1111/jeb.12882. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alvarez LW, Alvarez W, Asaro F, Michel HV. Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. Science. 1980;208:1095–1108. doi: 10.1126/science.208.4448.1095. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Schulte P, et al. The Chicxulub asteroid impact and mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Science. 2010;327:1214–1218. doi: 10.1126/science.1177265. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Robertson DS, McKenna MC, Toon OB, Hope S, Lillegraven JA. Survival in the first hours of the Cenozoic. GSA Bull. 2004;116:760–768. doi: 10.1130/B25402.1. - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources