Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Finicky no more: ancient snakes ate their way to success

The ancestor of living snakes lived on invertebrates, but its descendants colonized the planet by going gourmet.
A yellow blunt-headed tree snake eating red-eyed tree frog eggs

A yellow blunt-headed tree snake (Imantodes inornatus) dines on frog eggs, one of the many epicurean delights of modern snakes. Credit: John David Curlis (CC BY 4.0)

After the devastating mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, snakes quickly developed a taste for a bountiful array of creatures — helping to give rise to the nearly 4,000 modern-day snake species1.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 598, 389 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02790-2

References

  1. Grundler, M. C. & Rabosky, D. L. PLoS Biol. 19, e3001414 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links