200 years after the first dinosaur, scientists use brain scans on a 100-million-year-old snake fossil from Brazil

Two centuries ago, a British geologist gave the world its first named dinosaur. Megalosaurus, described from a handful of fossilised bones, marked the birth of an entire scientific field. Back then, researchers worked with little more than fragments, guesswork and imagination to picture prehistoric life. Fast forward 200 years, and palaeontology looks unrecognisable. Scientists no longer just look at bones, they scan them, digitally reconstruct brains, and map evolutionary history down to the level of nerve pathways. A newly described Cretaceous snake fossil from Brazil shows exactly how far the field has travelled, and why the next chapter of prehistoric discovery may prove even more revealing than the last.How the first dinosaur discovery changed palaeontology forever According to Reuters, in 1824, the description of Megalosaurus gave scientists their first formal look at what would later be called a dinosaur, decades before the term itself was even coined. At the time, understanding an extinct creature meant piecing together isolated bones and drawing conclusions largely from shape and size alone. There was no way to peer inside a skull, examine soft tissue impressions, or model...