Fossil Boa

The Messel Pit is a 48-million-year-old fossil locality, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site by virtue of the extraordinary preservation of its fossils. Still, this 1-meter fossil snake collected by the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung is breathtaking even by the high standards of Messel. It is a juvenile specimen of a kind of extinct boa, where even some of the scales are preserved. Shortly before it died, it had swallowed an extinct lizard called a basilisk. The lizard, in turn, had swallowed an insect shortly before it was captured by the snake. All three can be seen - can you find them?