Given that the geology of Megalo Emvolon was not well established until the analysis of Koufos et al. In this paper, Spratt ( 1857:183) mentioned that he found the snake vertebrae, along with an indeterminate large mammal, “in the marls at about one mile N. Spratt is known to have visited the Thessaloniki area in March 1854, serving on the ship “Spitfire” (Maempel 1986) and he personally described the geology of the region three years later (Spratt 1857). He was also the author of several papers dealing with the geology of the localities he visited (Spratt 1842, 1847). Captain Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt was heavily interested in fossils and had collected during his voyages with the British Navy across the Mediterranean, numerous specimens from several localities (Maempel 1986).
It is therefore impossible to know exactly from which of the several small fossil concentrations of Megalo Emvolon the snake vertebrae were collected. crotaloides, Owen ( 1857:199) just mentioned that Captain Spratt collected these fossils from “Karabournou, on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Salonica” (=Thessaloniki). The Megalo Emvolon section faunistically conforms to the early Pliocene (Zanclean–earliest Piacenzian) late Ruscinian European Land Mammal Zone MN 15, estimated at 4.2–3.2 Ma (Koufos et al. This is also the case for the lost type material of L. ( 1991), cannot be accurately assigned to a precise level of Megalo Emvolon. Fossils found before the study of Koufos et al. The characters of the sediments indicate a rapid deposition and the mammal fossils recovered from MEV, MEM and MEL do not suggest any age differences (Boev and Koufos 2000). It comprises three different fossiliferous levels: a lower one, Megalo Emvolon 1 (MEV), situated in the grey argillaceous sands near the bottom of the outcrop near the sea Megalo Emvolon 2 (MEM), situated around twenty meters above MEV, above a bed with red sands and gravels and Megalo Emvolon 3 (MEL), situated around ten meters above MEM, near the top of the section (Koufos et al. There is not a clear fossiliferous horizon in Megalo Emvolon, but several small fossil concentrations, which are dispersed across the deposits. The locality of Megalo Emvolon was first discovered by Arambourg in the 1910s and is well known for its large mammals (Arambourg and Piveteau 1929 Koufos 2006).
The Gonia Formation is highly fossiliferous and consists of both lenticular and massively bedded clays, sandstones, marls, and marly limestones (Syrides 1990). Megalo Emvolon is situated in the northern part of the Gonia Formation, very near the city of Thessaloniki in the prefecture of Central Macedonia, northern Greece (Koufos et al. Karabournou (also known as Karabournu, Karaburun or Falaise de Karaburun) is an old name for the modern Megalo Emvolon. The occurrence and diversity of giant vipers in the European fossil record is discussed. Nevertheless, this new material confirms the validity of the taxon and further points that certain vertebral characters featured in the original description by Owen ( 1857) were in fact inaccurate. Unfortunately, the fragmentary nature of the new vertebra precludes any precise conclusions about the taxonomic status of this taxon and the affinities of Laophis within the other members of the Viperidae cannot be clarified. crotaloides and it currently represents the only available specimen for this taxon. This vertebra is here assigned to the species L. Although the vertebra is fragmentary, it shares with the former taxon, overall large size and clear viperid features. Here we report on a previously undescribed vertebra of a large snake from the same area of the type locality of L. Ever since, Laophis has been regarded a mystery for ophidian palaeontology, with almost all subsequent authors neglecting it or considering it problematic, even if its proposed dimensions of more than three meters reached mythical standards (Kuhn 1939 Hoffstetter 1955 Rage 1984 Szyndlar 1991 Szyndlar and Rage 2002). According to Owen, the vertebrae apparently belonged to a very large viperid with striking similarity to modern rattlesnakes ( Crotalus). In 1857, the eminent British palaeontologist Richard Owen described Laophis crotaloides, a new species of viperid snakes, on the basis of 13 large, fossilized vertebrae from Megalo Emvolon, near Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
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