Posted on 02/03/2004 2:37:14 PM PST by AdmSmith
The mystery of where Earth's first snakes lived as they were evolving into limbless creatures from their lizard ancestors has intrigued scientists for centuries. Now, the first study ever to analyze genes from all the living families of lizards has revealed that snakes made their debut on the land, not in the ocean. The discovery resolves a long-smoldering debate among biologists about whether snakes had a terrestrial or a marine origin roughly 150 million years ago--a debate rekindled recently by controversial research in favor of the marine hypothesis.
In a paper to be published in the 7 May 2004 issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, Nicolas Vidal, a postdoctoral fellow, and S. Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State, describe how they put the two theories to the test. They collected the largest genetic data set for snakes and lizards ever used to address this question. Their collection includes two genes from 64 species representing all 19 families of living lizards and 17 of the 25 families of living snakes.
Genetic material from some of the lizards was difficult to obtain because some species live only on certain small islands or in remote parts of the world. "We felt it was important to analyze genes from all the lizard groups because almost every lizard family has been suggested as being the one most closely related to snakes. If we had failed to include genes from even one of the lizard families, we could have missed getting the right answer," Hedges explains.
"For the marine hypothesis to be correct, snakes must be the closest relative of the only lizards known to have lived in the ocean when snakes evolved--the giant, extinct mosasaur lizards," Vidal says. "While we can't analyze the genes of the extinct mosasaurs, we can use the genes of their closest living cousins, monitor lizards like the giant Komodo Dragon," he explains.
The team analyzed gene sequences from each of the species, using several statistical methods to determine how the species are related. "Although these genes have the same function in each species--and so, by definition, are the same gene--their structure in each species is slightly different because of mutations that have developed over time," Vidal explains. When the genetic comparisons were complete, Vidal and Hedges had a family tree showing the relationships of the species.
"Our results show clearly that snakes are not closely related to monitor lizards like the giant Komodo Dragon, which are the closest living relatives of the mosasaurs--the only known marine lizard living at the time that snakes evolved," Vidal says. "Because all the other lizards at that time lived on the land, our study provides strong evidence that snakes evolved on the land, not in the ocean."
The research suggests an answer to another long-debated question: why snakes lost their limbs. Their land-based lifestyle, including burrowing underground at least some of the time, may be the reason. "Having limbs is a real problem if you need to fit through small openings underground, as anybody who has tried exploring in caves knows," Hedges says. "Your body could fit through much smaller openings if you did not have the wide shoulders and pelvis that support your limbs." The researchers note that the burrowing lifestyle of many other species, including legless lizards, is correlated with the complete loss of limbs or the evolution of very small limbs.
This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Astrobiology Institute and the National Science Foundation.
(Excerpt) Read more at science.psu.edu ...
I believe it takes work to appreciate the full extent of what truth is contained in every verse. Just as we could find endless truth and information from an once of pond water, the same depths are contained within each verse.
Try as you might, Zulu, you cannot reconcile evolution and creation. I know that many people attempt to do this and convince themselves it is right, but it is not.
Either God created man or he didn't. I believe the former and it doesn't agree with any theory of evolution.
Yes, of course but just as the examples used to describe sowing to farmers have to be true or the farmers would reject the message that follows, I believe that the creation story cannot be literally untrue. This is not to mean that it is possible for us to discern the literal truth of those verses, unlike what some fundamentalists believe possible.
The fallacy of ambiguity.
Because it doesn't match with Scripture, evolution is bad theology. If evolution is true, then death preceded sin and cannot be its penalty, and therefore Christ's death did not pay that penalty. One's view of God is distorted when viewed through evolutionary glasses. The concept of billions of years of evolutionary meandering and extinction is inconsistent with God's omnipotence, omniscience, purposiveness, loving nature, and even His grace."
John D. Morris, Ph.D.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground-- 7 then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Help me out here, Zulu. Is this God's idea of a trick? Do you believe that God would inspire the very first book of the Bible to be one of fairy tales or confusion?
Come on now. Is that sound Christian understanding?
You quite obviously did not attend the same fraternity parties that I did in the 60's
Regards
What's to say that God didn't create man through the process of evolution?
That statement, in a nutshell, is why I could never be a fundamentalist. If reality does not conform to a literal reading of the Bible, then I have to conclude that literal reading of the Bible is wrong. No rational way around it.
I find that interpretation perverse beyond imagination. It conveys no useful message, moral or otherwise. I assume that forcing another creature to eat dirt is a rather old form of punishment and humiliation -- literally and figuratively. But think about this: the serpent in the garden might be interpreted as a literal snake, implying that snakes have or had mystical powers. Or it might be interpreted as Satan disguised as a snake, in which case, real snakes have been unjustly punished for all these millennia.
The short answer is the Bible. See post #171 and tell me where there is any doubt.
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