This illustration shows what the four-legged fossil -- which a team of scientists now says is a marine lizard and not a snake -- might have looked like. Julius Csotonyi ...

Fernando Garberoglio, et alThe well-preserved skull of Najash rionegrina, an ancient hind-legged serpent. It’s not every day that aspiring scientists stumble upon something groundbreaking, but ...

A mysterious fossil previously thought to be a four-legged snake is actually an ancient lizard, a new analysis suggests. Researchers first identified the roughly 120 million-year-old specimen from ...

SALT LAKE CITY — A critter heralded as the first four-legged fossil snake on record may actually not be a snake, according to new research. Instead, the 120-million-year-old creature is likely a ...

A newly-discovered fossilised four-legged snake has been found, with palaeobiologists claiming it could be the missing link between ancient snakes and modern-day lizards. The 113-million year old ...

It all started with a grand claim: scientists had discovered the first known four-legged snake fossil from Brazil. The specimen, named Tetrapodophis amplectus, was small – about the size of a pencil – ...

This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery," said Martill, who has named the reptile Tetrapodophis, meaning four-legged snake. There are two competing theories about how today's slithering snakes evolved.

In 2015, the discovery of Tetrapodophis amplectus, a four-limbed snake fossil, ignited excitement as a potential evolutionary link. However, its classification faced challenges, with some ...