UQ research finds giant snake at end of the "rainbow"

University of Queensland research has provided the first detailed description of a giant prehistoric snake thought to be the "rainbow serpent" of the Aboriginal Dreaming.

Zoology and Entomology Department postdoctoral fellow Dr John Scanlon and QEII Research Fellow Dr Michael Lee pieced together skeletal remains as well as examined modern snakes to describe "Wonambi" in the January 27 issue of the prestigious international journal, Nature.

It is the second Nature paper on this $170 000, Australian Research Council-funded project that Dr Lee and colleagues have published recently.

An article in August 1999 detailed the origin of modern snakes' feeding abilities, in particular how they evolved the ability to "dislocate" their jaws to swallow huge prey.

Thought to reach lengths of six metres with a dinner-plate-sized body thickness, Wonambi was a "living dinosaur", the last of a group of giant snakes which arose 80 million years ago during the Cretaceous and survived to around 30,000 years ago in Australia.

Over-hunting by Australia's early inhabitants is thought to be a factor in their extinction at this time along with other megafauna including giant kangaroos, wombats and goannas.

"Until recently, very little was known about the anatomy and evolutionary relationships of this gigantic snake. Our conclusion that Wonambi is one of the most primitive snakes refutes previous theories of primordial snakes being small, blind and worm-like. On the contrary, it suggests that primitive snakes were large predators," Dr Scanlon said.

Dr Lee said Wonambi also shed crucial light on the lizard group ancestral to snakes. "It exhibits skull and tooth characteristics that link it (and thus, snakes as a whole) to goannas - in particular, a group of giant extinct marine goannas called mosasaurs," he said.

Dr Scanlon said the snake's name, chosen by the late Dr Meredith Smith when incomplete remains were first described in 1976, derived from a Central Australian Aboriginal term for "rainbow serpent".

"This recently extinct snake might have been the basis for the highly important ?rainbow serpent' in Aboriginal Dreaming legends. However, this legend might also have been
based on modern-day pythons, or even on Asiatic cobras revered by the ancestors of the first Australians," he said.

For more information, contact Dr John Scanlon (telephone 61 74 789 0913 or email jscanlon@ultra.net.au) or Dr Michael Lee (telephone 61 7 3365 8817 or 61 7 3365 2491 or email mlee@zoology.uq.edu.au).