hemal

This specimen is identified as a fossil snake on the basis of its highly kinetic skull with anteriorly free ending maxillae and dentaries, slender and elongate tooth-bearing palatines and pterygoids, single mental foramen in the dentary, high number of presacral vertebrae, and the presence of hypapophyses or hemal ridges throughout the trunk, distally bifurcated lymphapophyses in the cloacal and proximal tail region, and paired hemapophyses on the tail vertebrae.

2000 March 17, Eitan Tchernov et al., “A Fossil Snake with Limbs”, in Science, volume 287, number 5460, →DOI, pages 2010–2012