Yahoo Answers is shutting down on 4 May 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
What possible conditions could lead to lizards developing into snakes and losing their limbs?
12 Answers
- GabeLv 63 months ago
Plenty, living underground like worms, living aquatically like eels, living by poking through crevices like weasels (most limb-reduced, closest-thing-to-snakes among mammals), living by "swimming" through grass like skinks, living by shooting their heads out to catch fish like snake-necked turtles or "snaky" birds,,,,,,,
- The First DragonLv 73 months ago
Lizards never turn into snakes. I have seen a legless lizard, which has the physiology of a lizard but no legs; it burrows like a snake.
A snake has only one lung and is adapted very well to its legless condition.
- ?Lv 73 months ago
A baby snake fossil believed to be 98.8 Ma (million years) old was recently found.
The young snake’s bones were beautifully preserved in amber, a plastic-like material that was formerly tree resin. The fossil shows 97 vertebrae and ribs but the skull was not found. Some nearby shed snake skin fragments are assumed to be from the creature. However, there was no trace of hind legs or even a pelvis (hip), though these are known from certain ‘younger’ fossil snakes.
Applying standard uniformitarian/evolutionary reasoning to the fossil evidence as it stands, legs were lost, regained and lost again during evolution, but this violates an evolutionary precept called Dollo’s Law.
- D gLv 73 months ago
there is an idea that whales had feet ..they had started living in water and eventually lost the feet because they didnt need them they still have the remnants of leg bones
- daniel gLv 73 months ago
That is a nice hypothesis and fossil records show what would be snakes developed limbs for walking on land.
- JamesLv 53 months ago
"Losing their limbs" has happened more than once to lizards, in clades that use their noses to burrow.
Look up "glass snakes" and "legless lizards."
- Anonymous3 months ago
loads of mutations that don't stop them from procreating