IMAGE - DAVE MARTILL, UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTHJust as the fossil Archaeopteryx is widely considered to be an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, scientists now have the missing link between lizards and snakes, according to researchers who discovered a remarkable fossil in a German museum. The fossilized new species, Tetrapodophis amplectus, has four prehensile limbs but other characteristics that are distinctly snake-like, such as an elaborately elongated body and large ventral scales.

“From a developmental perspective, this could be one of the most important fossils ever found,” evolutionary biologist Martin Cohn of the University of Florida, Gainesville, told Nature. “The combination of a snake-like body with complete forelimbs and hindlimbs is like a snake version of Archaeopteryx,” Cohn, who was not involved with the research, added.

The fossilized Tetrapodophis, whose name loosely translates as four-legged...