Sea snakes exemplify a unique evolutionary transition from terrestrial to fully marine lifestyles. Their morphology, physiology and behaviour display a suite of adaptations that enable survival in ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. The ancient oceans of the Eocene epoch teemed with ...

When they first evolved from lizards more than 100 million years ago, snakes were ecological bit players slithering around the fringes of ecosystems dominated by dinosaurs. But today there are around ...

In deserts, jungles and swamps around the world, snakes are waging a biochemical war against their prey. When a snake displays its fangs, it’s showing off one of evolution’s greatest weapons. This is ...

It is easy to think of snakes as creatures that were always legless, gliding effortlessly through grass or sand. Yet millions of years ago, their ancestors had four fully formed limbs. The journey ...

The opening pages of the 1943 book The Little Prince recall how the narrator, as a child, once drew a picture not of a hat — as every adult insisted it was — but of a boa constrictor that had ...

The fossilized skeleton of the newly discovered snake species Hibernophis breithaupti, which lived 38 million years ago in what is now western Wyoming, reveals insights into the evolution and social ...