Rare 2 million year old snakes found in Northern Greece

Paleontologist Dr Giorgos Georgalis of the University of Toronto, discovered the fossilised remains of two new species of snakes that have never been found in any part of the world before have been discovered near the city of Serres, in Northern Greece.

Georgalis dated the fossils to be between 5.5 to 6.0 million years old, and has named them Periergophis micros and Paraxenophis spanios.

"These two new snakes have new names because they belong to a totally new species and are completely different from any other species. The strange thing is that such vertebral anatomy has not been observed anywhere else and there is nothing, either in modern or in extinct serpent species, that even comes close to the morphology of these new species," said Dr Giorgos Georgalis.

Georgalis has published a scientific paper on the discovery, in collaboration with other scientists from German, Swiss and Czech Republic Universities.

As he explained, these serpents "are so unique that we find it difficult to include them in any known family and we immediately understand that they belong to a new species."

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