{"id":386965,"date":"2021-03-17T15:25:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T18:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=386965"},"modified":"2021-03-17T15:25:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T18:25:42","slug":"the-oldest-and-largest-blind-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-oldest-and-largest-blind-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"The oldest and largest blind snake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paleontologists from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), Ribeir\u00e3o Preto campus, have identified the world\u2019s largest and oldest blind snake, a burrowing reptile with reduced eyes. A fossil of the new species, named <em>Boipeba tayasuensis, <\/em>was found in the municipality of Taia\u00e7u in the north of S\u00e3o Paulo State. The specimen lived 87.8 million years ago and was about 1 meter long, three times the size of present-day blind snakes (<em>iScience<\/em>, November 19). \u201cThe description of this new species suggests that blind snakes later evolved to become smaller,\u201d says USP paleontologist and study leader Annie Schmaltz Hsiou. In the Tupi-Guarani indigenous language, the term <em>boipeba<\/em> means flat snake, a reference to its flat vertebra (the only bone fragment of the animal found). <em>Tayasuensis<\/em> refers to where the fossil was found in 2009, on the outskirts of Monte Alto, a municipality known for its dinosaur and crocodile fossils. Prior to this new discovery, the oldest fossil records of <em>Scolecophidia<\/em>, the infraorder that includes blind snakes, were 56 million years old, found in Africa and Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paleontologists from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), Ribeir\u00e3o Preto campus, have identified the world\u2019s largest and oldest blind snake","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":387376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[255],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-386965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notes","tag-paleontology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386965"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387502,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386965\/revisions\/387502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386965"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=386965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}