Snakes and lizards played it safe in early evolution—outcompeting ancient cousins.
Earth is crawling with lizards and snakes. More than 10,000 species of these reptiles, called squamates, have adapted to thrive across almost every continent. But this vast assortment took a surprisingly long time to develop, according to University of Bristol paleontologist Jorge Herrera-Flores and his colleagues.
The researchers observed a strange pattern: the two groups’ evolutionary trajectories were flipped. Squamates evolved differences in body size slowly during the first two thirds of the group’s existence, from about 240 million to 80 million years ago. At the same time, rhynchocephalians were rapidly splitting into a profusion of different sizes—until their diversity collapsed.
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