Found in an amber mine in northern Myanmar, the new species of Xen snails is named Cretatortulosa gignens, representing the earliest fossil known for the breeding activities of the ruoi snails.
In a report published in the journal Gondawa Research, the researchers wrote: Rarely are historical events of life randomly recorded by special preservation in an fossil sample.
According to the study authors, this is a rare view of a mother snail submerged by an amphibious snake as soon as it gave birth in a tropical forest in the middle of the White-pink period or early Cenomanian century.
The specially well-preserved fossil sample contains the 99 million-year-old soft core of the snakehead snails, along with the five newlyborn snails, the youngest of which is still connected to its mother through a line of mucus.
'The renal snails appear to be wrapped in amber - a type of tree fossil - immediately after being born and preserved at that location for millions of years' - said Adrienne Jochum, an ecologist at the Senckenberg Institute for the Study and the Frankfurt Museum of Natural History in Germany.
Biologist Jochum says having children is an exception, not a rule for free-range snails because they often lay eggs. Cretatortulosa gignens may have degraded, giving birth to prey to protect it from prey as long as possible in the tropical forests of the White-cheeked Crane, she said.
In addition to the rarity of the blooming state, the fact that the snake snails are stuck in the plastic layer covered with trees helps the bodies of soft-bodied species to be surprisingly well preserved.
Researchers have taken a CT scan to study more closely the structure of this ancient snakehead snail.
With the results collected, the research author commented: 'Our discovery provides significant grounds to explain the evolution of warm-backed animals 80 million years earlier than the known fossil records to date.
It shows that feeding instead of laying eggs was a suitable breeding strategy during the White-cheeked crop, which could increase the survival of young in a tropical forest full of carnivores' '''.
Finding evidence of childbirth in fossil samples is extremely rare. In 2011, scientists in Nevada, USA, discovered traces of an extinct marine reptile that had been extinct for 246 million years with its unborn calves still in the mother's womb.
