Most Primitive Snake Fossil Discovered 77
smooth wombat writes "A newly discovered fossil seems to suggest that snakes evolved on land rather than in the water. The size of the fossil is unknown but it wasn't more than three feet long according to Hussam Zaher of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
It's the first time scientists have found a snake with a sacrum -- a bony feature supporting the pelvis -- he said. That feature was lost as snakes evolved from lizards, and since this is the only known snake that hasn't lost it, it must be the most primitive known, he said."
Snakes?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Snakes?! (Score:2)
Re:Snakes?! (Score:2)
That's my SOAP 2 script. Feel free to use it royalty free, so long as I get to see the movie.
Re:Snakes?! (Score:1)
Lawyers and Politicians (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lawyers and Politicians (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:2)
Cause if they found a snake older than 90 million years and it didn't have a sacrum... that'd just confuse the issue all over again.
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Yeah! (Score:2)
How about finding a snake that's evolving a pelvis? If fish can do it, can't snakes?
Re:Yeah! (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
This snake, with the sacrum, had to come before modern snakes. But evolution isn't a process of an entire species becoming an entire new species.
A group of these snakes could have been geographically isolated, during which time they evolved further, losing the sacrum. Meanwhile, others of this species were still happily breeding elsewhere.
So it could be possible to find a sacrum-less fossil older (though probably not by much) than this one.
It'd scare me.... (Score:1)
So let me get this straight... (Score:4, Funny)
Wow! The final proof that men are more primitive than women!
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Although there are a couple of handfuls of features that women have that men don't.
Oh, men have them... (Score:1)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:4, Funny)
Well...sometimes less than a handful, sometimes more.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Losing features is entirely consistent with genetic science. Gaining new features is apparently accepted in the scientific community, but doesn't make any sense to me.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Lawyers - Slimemold or Snake? (Score:4, Funny)
Oldest Snake (Score:1, Funny)
Eden Reference (Score:2)
One of things I find interesting is that, 99 people out of 100, they'd say it was an apple and would even remember the Bible saying it was an apple, but it's simply stated as "the fruit" and the word used might not even mean fruit as we know it. The earliest manuscripts actually show a mushroom. ^_^ Eat a mushroom for cosmic knowledge? Sounds plausible enough... It's one of those cases of Biblical fanon [wikipedia.org] like t
Biblical serpent (Score:3, Insightful)
The serpent in the Biblical account of Genesis 3 was apparently a very different creature from modern day snakes. Besides the fact that the serpent spoke aloud (Genesis 3:1 - generally accepted to be Satan speaking through the serpent), it must have had some other means of locomotion besides crawling. The curse upon the serpent is recorded in Genesis 3:14 as such:
And the Lord God said unto the serpent, "Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life."
"Eating dust" is generally accepted to mean that the serpent is cursed to have its face on the ground, not that its diet would actually consist of dirt.
Go ahead, mod me down and flame me.
-azmaveth
Re:Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Re:Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Exactly. The serpent could no longer walk after it was cursed.
The researchers understood the Bible connection... (Score:2)
Oddly enough, we were discussing this article in class this evening (anthropology/hamartiology). Apparently there are rabbinical traditions that say the serpent in Gene
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:5, Interesting)
More likely the famous Genesis story incorporates a folk explanation for why some snakes have vestigal traces of walking apparatus.
If you step back and look at it, most of Genesis consists of stories explaining why things are (and ought to be!) the way they are. It's a very common motif in mythologies and legendary histories from all over the world.
The yarn about breeding sheep in front of striped staves to produce striped sheep, and the thrice-repeated "that's not my wife, that's
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:2)
Strangely enough, the geography, chronology, and general history of The Da Vinci Code are also reliable, but only an idiot would take the whole thing seriously. The Iliad has also provided a few surprises about geography, demographics, and political entities in the Bronze Age, but no one concludes from that that the Ol
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:2)
No, I don't have a bone to pick with people who don't know any better. It's people who offer foolish arguments to justify ignoring the facts who I have little patience with.
> Let me ask you then to prove that none of the Bible can be convincingly demonstrated to to be written before the event.
Why is the ball in my court? You're the one asking us to believe that the ordinary operations of natur
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Is it? News to me. Would you be kind enough to show me evidence of that?
But don't fool yourself into thinking there is actually any evidence for it.
Pot, meet kettle. Show me your evidence instead of saying "It's people who offer foolish arguments to justify ignoring the facts who I have little patience with" and not giving facts to back it up.
Evidence... (Score:2)
Flock, lamb, sheperd, father, son, children, "thou shall", "thou shall not", brother, sister, are all words used heavily in the bible, they are used in the context of describing man's relationship with God and each other. Coincidently, they could also be seen as describing and justifying the natural social hierarchy found in many mammals, including th
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:2)
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:2)
There's much documentation of errors and outright changes in bible stories. There's also, if you really care to dig, indications that at least some bible stories are actually adaptations of older (and pagan!) stories. Evidently they were popular and were incorporated into the old testament.
As for "believing" the bible as "the truth": do you stone your neighbor for growing two crops side by side? If not, why not? (Since we are disc
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
I have a question for the evolutionists though. How on earth did sexual reproduction ever evolve? Besides the jokes about recreation versus procreation (grow up), can anyone explain it to me?
A life form that reproduc
Sexuality (Score:1)
Re:Sexuality (Score:1)
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
That alone seems disingenuous. So a single line in the new testament invalidates the rest of both books? Cool rationalization, but one that more than one has pointed out to the church of your choice as the reason for that church to not exist. BTW, note that that part
Re: Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Different epoch, different snakes (Score:3, Funny)
I can only speculate that the Genesis snake is an ancestor of the snake with hips, this makes some sense, a talking snake would take millions of years to evolve, it would also tie in nicely with the slim evidence we have of a two legged Genesis snake.
As an aside, it appears that the talking sna
Re:Biblical serpent (Score:1)
Wasn't this known? (Score:2)
I thought it was already well-known that snakes originated on land. Their gait leaves little to the imagination...
You Don't Know the Half of It! (Score:2, Troll)
Sure, Genisis has God taking away their legs [findarticles.com]. All that was lacking was the proof. It's no coincidence the proof is the Sacrum now is it? Dummm, deee dummb dumb!
You can also prove the Sun is smaller than a quarter by holding the quarter up in the sky and blocking your view of the Sun entirely! This trick should be good for the quarter of US citizens who think the Sun revolves around the Earth [washingtonmonthly.com]. Ironically, things are worse in Japan, but [asianews.it]
eh, so? (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? (Score:2)
Not clear-cut, sadly. (Score:5, Interesting)
The second option - the current leading theory - is that snakes evolved in the sea, lost their legs there, and that the snake found on land was some kind of genetic throwback, a branch that had nothing to do with the main line of snakes. This theory assumes that this find is NOT more primitive than the older fossils, but that the older fossils are more primitive by virtue of being considerably older.
It does raise a number of problems, though, in that although there were sea-based snakes that did have legs, there is no evidence whatsoever that snakes ever evolved in the seas. The only reason this was seriously considered, in recent times, was that a precursor had to exist with legs, and the only snake fossils with legs that were known were all from aquatic deposits.
The next-best theory is that snakes evolved on land and migrated back into the sea at a time when they still had legs. Migrations back into the ocean have happened - the Manatee had a common land ancestor with a Giraffe, and Cetaceans are believed to have evolved from a land-based fox-like creature. Such "reverse" migrations, then, have occurred before - probably quite a lot.
The problem here is that, as I mentioned, the aquatic fossils are almost ten million years older. That's a LOT of time to account for, as it would require land snakes to have existed equally as long, plus enough extra to have a common ancestor that had evolved far enough to be identifiably a snake, plus as much additional time as needed to have forked off an aquatic branch of the family.
No land-based snake fossils with legs have been found for the timeframe required. This doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot - snakes don't fossilize that well, not many people hunt fossil snakes, the odds of a discoverer realizing what they had AND publishing that fact are low, and since the aquatic theory held supreme, not many people were looking for those fossils in locations that would have been land at the time.
On the other hand, it is extremely poor science to draw conclusions from evidence that is merely assumed to exist of an event that may never have happened at all. It is very easy to prove some pet theory, if you only ever have to assume the evidence might exist to do so.
It is wrong to say that this recent find has helped anyone understand the evolution of snakes. The strongest statement that can be made is that it helps to establish where to look and what to look for.
Re:Not clear-cut, sadly. (Score:1)
Nice article and discussion on this over at Pharyngula [scienceblogs.com].
Been a good couple of weeks for well publicized transitionals.
Really primitive? (Score:1)
Re:Really primitive? (Score:2)
A snake, a snake... (Score:2)
legless lizard (Score:1)