Snake Like A Plane: Extinct 'Winged' Serpent Discovered In Tennessee

GRAY, TN — Two scientists working at one of North America's richest fossil sites in northeast Tennessee discovered a previously unknown species of snake with unusual projections on its back that resemble wings.

East Tennessee State University alumni Steven Jasinski and David Moscato, digging at the Gray Fossil Site, essentially a 5-million-year-old sinkhole in Washington County, discovered and identified the small snake known as Zilantophis schuberti, "Schubert's winged serpent," naming the creature for ETSU professor Blaine Schubert, a former teacher of both men. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Herpetology.

The scientists say the snake was between 12 and 16 inches long with broad, wing-shaped projections on the sides of its vertebrae that are "unlike any other known species of living or extinct snakes." These projections were likely attachment sites for the snake’s back muscles. The snake, of course, could not actually fly. In honor of its unusual bone structure, the men assigned the genus name Zilantophis for the Zilant, a winged serpent from Tatar mythology. (For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

The snake is the second new species Jasinski has had a hand in identifying. In 2016, he and ETSU paleontologist Steven Wallace identified a coyote-sized dog, Cynarctus wangi, that lived in eastern North America 12 million years ago.

Since its discovery in 2001 during a Tennessee Department of Transportation project, the Gray Fossil Site, one of the only late Miocene epoch fossil sites in the eastern United States, has yielded fossils of mastodon, red panda, tapirs, peccary, sloth, salamander, rhinoceros, toad and turtle.

Drawing by Steven Jasinski via ETSU