After the mass extinction, snakes flourished

On September 14, a study published in Nature Communications showed that the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event 66 million years ago may have rapidly enriched the diversity of snake species
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Although the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event led to the disappearance of about 76% of the species on the earth, the species diversity of some vertebrate groups later increased
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However, the impact of this mass extinction event on the evolution of snakes has not been clear

Nicholas Longrich, Catherine Klein, and colleagues reconstructed the evolutionary history of snakes by integrating the following data
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These data are: the evolutionary relationship between 115 unextinct snakes, the mutation rate of DNA, and the geographical distribution of fossilized and unextinct snakes

The author finally stated that the ability of snakes to not need to eat frequently, coupled with the extinction of natural enemies and predators after the mass extinction, may be the reason why snakes survived and species gradually enriched

Related paper information: http://dx.