CAIRO — With the participation of an international team of researchers, an Egyptian research team at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP) has recently discovered the oldest fossil of the ancestors of the Egyptian cobra snake, as well as the largest ever legless lizard, both dating back 37 million years.

Mansoura University stated in a Facebook statement that the discovery also included new specimens of the reninotite snake. It noted that the discovery was published Feb. 16 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (JVP), which specializes in vertebrate fossils.

Marwa El-Hares, member of the MUVP team and the main author of the study, told Al-Monitor that this is the first time that fossils of animals of the Squamata genus — an animal rank belonging to reptiles with renewed scales — have been found, and added that they are divided into two groups — lizards and serpents.

This discovery, she said, unveils the life and development of squamous creatures in the Fayum Depression —a large basin formed in the limestone plateau of the Western Desert, southwest of Cairo — during the Paleogene era, which is the first of three eras of the Cenozoic era (66 to 23 million years ago).