page_title: Dinilysia
section_title: Physiology and Lineage
hierarchical_section_title: Dinilysia / Physiology and Lineage
caption_attribution_description: English: Figure 1: According to Dr. Yi, the x-ray computer tomography generated 3 significant figures to provide evidence towards its burrowing nature. A.) slender semicircular canals to wrap around the B.) large spherical vestibule, which is a morphological signature of burrowing. C.) Is a large foraman ovale to support blood flow and network.
context_page_description: Dinilysia is an extinct genus of snake from the Late Cretaceous of South America. The snake reached a length of 6–10 feet and preyed on smaller animals. The shape of the animal's skull does support the suggestion that snakes were burrowers during their ancestry; it is clear that Dinilysia was terrestrial.
context_section_description: The Dinilysia patagonica is a stem snake that is very closely related to the original ancestor of the clade of crown snakes. Once the fossil of the snake was discovered, an x-ray computed tomography was used to build a digitized endocast of its inner ear. The results displayed that the Dinilysia patagonica's inner ear anatomy had 3 main parts. It had a large spherical vestibule, large foramen ovale, and slender semicircular canals in its inner ear.
  Especially significantly, the spherical vestibule is an inner ear organ that is a morphological signature of burrowing snakes. A large spherical vestibule does not exist in aquatic or generalist (both land and water) snakes, only in snake species that burrow. A spherical vestibule contains a large saccular otolith, which transmits vibrations to the snake's brain. Due to a spherical vestibule, the Dinilysia patagonica was a species especially sensitive to low-frequency ground vibrations rather than airborne frequencies.
  The surmounting evidence displays that Dinilysia patagonica was more than likely a terrestrial burrower from the Cretaceous era. This discovery also extends its evidence to the fact that a burrowing habit predates the lineages of modern snakes. These ancestral snakes detected predators and captured prey specifically using low-frequency ground vibrations.
caption: Bony inner ear labyrinth of Dinilysia patagonica
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Rotated 90 CW", "Image ExifOffset": "38", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4032", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3024"}