[Virginia-American]

Another area in Genesis where the Bible writers got it right. The curse God put on the serpent was that it was to crawl on it's belly. Obviously it had legs before that and lost them.

Wonder if some ancient Canaanite or Hebrew or Sumerian, whoever first came up with the "just so" story of "how the snake lost its legs", had actually studied a snake skeleton and seen the vestiges?

[metmom]

So which do scientists think came first, the snake or the serpent/reptile/whatever you want to call it?

If the legged creature, what would have caused it to lose its legs, then? It certainly would not have provided any evolutionary advantage and it couldn't be classified as *not needing it* (like the old appendix argument). Legs are a bit more critical than that.