A FOSSIL snake with well-developed rear limbs has fired the debate over whether snakes' ancestors lived on land or in the sea.

The 95-million-year-old Haasiophis terrasanctus was found in marine deposits north of Jerusalem. In 1996, researchers who studied a similar legged snake called Pachyrhachis decided that it was an ancestral snake that had never lost its rear legs. As Pachyrhachis was a sea predator, they concluded that it—and all snakes—had evolved from marine lizards called mosasaurs (New Scientist, 30 November 1996, p 17)

But Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum in Chicago thinks they got it wrong. He says Haasiophis could dislocate its jaw to swallow large prey—a feature that first appeared in advanced "big-mouth" snakes such as pythons. This suggests that far from being ancestral, both Haasiophis and Pachyrhachis are advanced snakes that had re-evolved legs. Snakes such as pythons retain limb buds, says Rieppel, so re-evolving limbs isn't a problem. He thinks the first snakes evolved from lizards that burrowed in soil or leaf debris.

However, Mike Caldwell of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa says that Rieppel's analysis fails to compare the legged snakes with mosasaurs, which he considers their closest relatives. That could mistakenly put primitive legged snakes among more modern ones.

All that is fake

While giant dinosaurs roamed the earth, snakes were basically the same size as they are now. The longest prehistoric snake was the python-like Giganthopis garstini, which inhabited what is now Egypt about 38 million years ago. Parts of a spinal column and a small piece of jaw discovered in Fayum, in the Western Desert, indicate a probable length of some 11m (36ft|).

Oh? And.. do you have anything to support that this is fake? Bible not withstanding.

Snakes such as pythons retain limb buds, says Rieppel, so re-evolving limbs isn't a problem.

That's not a snake, so doesn't dispute the Mosasaur to snake theory.

All that is fake

But there could be some kind of crypto sea serpent in the waters of scandanavia that started the lindwurm legends. As you know there are some very reliable sightings, far more evidence than "nessie".

It is unfortunate how many Christians cling to some of the silliest and unsupportable Biblical myths, like "God" taking away the snakes legs as punishment for Eden. This is about as realistic as kiplings story of how "Mr. Crocodile stretched Elephant child's nose into the first elephant's trunk". For intelligent people who believe in God certain Biblical stories must be regarded as "mythology". Not only from a scientific standpoint, such as the truth behind snakes and their legs, but also from a historical standpoint in that it is unquestionable that the Eden story saw its origins in a much earlier Eden story in Sumerian pagan religion. And we also see a snake tricking Gilgamesh out of his eternal life, and this story is much earlier than the bible.

one says skink, and the other one is also two different breed of kink.

That question was directed at XSAS_Daughter (XD).


BTW: Not mine either

and I gues there's quite a few of them in Finland - the land of of a thousand lakes...

No, no snakes with legs here in Finland for all i know