<
https://theconversation.com/80-million-year-old-snake-fossil-sheds-light-on-why-lizards-lost-their-limbs-and-started-slithering-287291>
"Snakes are everywhere in our legends and mythology. Yet for most of us, our
blood runs cold whenever we encounter these strangely undulating, scaly tubes
of muscle slithering through the leaf litter.
The loss of an arm or leg poses a challenge. Yet snakes do perfectly well
without all four of them. This makes them suspect. It also leaves us unable to
fathom how this radical transition produced one of the most successful
vertebrate body plans.
More than 4,000 species of snakes are alive today, on every continent except
Antarctica, from thread-thin burrowers to massive pythons, on land and in the
sea. We have studied them since antiquity, and still the oldest question about
them has no answer: what turned snakes into snakes?
We have long suspected their peculiar, limbless body plan is explained by how
the earliest snakes lived. In a new study, published today in
Nature, my
colleagues and I describe a small, exquisitely preserved fossil that brings us
closer to an answer than ever before."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
