Why there are so many species of serpent
Mammals were not the only group to benefit from the dinosaurs’ demise
THE CAENOZOIC—the era of Earth’s history since an asteroid strike 66m years ago ended the dinosaurs’ reign—is often called the age of mammals. And mammals did, indeed, do well in the scramble to fill the ecological niches suddenly vacated by that catastrophe, for there are now about 6,500 species of them. But several other groups were equally, if not more successful. Birds (technically dinosaurs, too, by ancestry, though few think of them that way) have about 11,000 species. Lizards have 7,000.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Snakes alive!”
From the October 16th 2021 edition
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