“There is no rational explanation for this tattoo, only post-inking scenarios. I do not study snakes, nor do I particularly like them. There is, however, a when. The idea and the product came at the end of a yearlong effort to delineate the biology behind a fossil skeleton. Although I have always sought to explain hard tissue morphology by reference to soft tissues, this work took me way beyond the limits of my previous understanding. The result was a massive expansion of my thinking on how modern biology can be integrated into understanding fossil populations. In the post-publication stupor, the snakes appeared and got inked. I suppose you could say that they represent the commingling of knowledge from living forms