What about sea snakes? They could have been first.

Very well played, subby.

+1

MaudlinMutantMollusk: C'mon, subby...

/everyone knows lawyers are devolved from sharks

Have you ever had dealings with the Partnership Collective?

By which of course we mean newly faked fossils.

Please.
Everyone knows that snakes didn't just magically appear as lawyers, they evolved into them. Hell we've seen snake evolution in the last few decades as they've evolved into politicians.

ZAZ: Not sure if the hotlink will work, but here's a try:

[www.nature.com image 850x509]

(See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nature11227 - f5.2.jpg if it fails.)

This fossil is the left line, running to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Numbers (2) through (7) are the jaw modifications that help define extant snakes. This fossil doesn't have them; it couldn't swallow prey bigger than its head.

Longrich is an idiot. The morphological data definitely points to a relation with dolichosaurs and pontosaurs. This specimen changes nothing, and Longrich is NOT the person you want to follow into the breach... the guy just jumps from group to group saying whatever he can to fan the flames.

it was only a short slither from low lying in the land, to laying about in courts

anfrind: MaudlinMutantMollusk: C'mon, subby...

/everyone knows lawyers are devolved from sharks

Have you ever had dealings with the Partnership Collective?

is there still a bounty on those?

rickycal78: Please.
Everyone knows that snakes didn't just magically appear as lawyers, they evolved into them. Hell we've seen snake evolution in the last few decades as they've evolved into politicians.

parallel evolution, politicians are evolved from leeches

Nice one, Mr/Ms. Submitty Person.

The Shoveller: ZAZ: Not sure if the hotlink will work, but here's a try:

[www.nature.com image 850x509]

(See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nature11227 - f5.2.jpg if it fails.)

This fossil is the left line, running to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Numbers (2) through (7) are the jaw modifications that help define extant snakes. This fossil doesn't have them; it couldn't swallow prey bigger than its head.

Longrich is an idiot. The morphological data definitely points to a relation with dolichosaurs and pontosaurs. This specimen changes nothing, and Longrich is NOT the person you want to follow into the breach... the guy just jumps from group to group saying whatever he can to fan the flames.

So, you're saying Nick is the Horner of Yale?

Wait- Wasn't that the accepted position already? I was taught that snakes evolved from 4-legged land animals and the legs shrank off. How is this new?

Oh, rubbish. Just those Godless Scientists at it again. Nothing happened more than 6,000 years ago.

/jee-zuss

No love for the 60 foot cretaceous snakes that ate dinosaurs?

And what about 50 foot cheerleader attacks? Read something about that yesterday.

/on Fark

//must be true

Oldiron_79: No love for the 60 foot cretaceous snakes that ate dinosaurs?

There would be love for it if there was such thing.

/Titanoboa =/ Cretaceous

New fossils?

Pythons have vestigile(sic) hip and leg bones. I always thought they evolved from lizards

or that they were left over from when God cursed them for tricking Eve into eating the apple.

Dinodork:

So, you're saying Nick is the Horner of Yale?

Something like that...


ZAZ: The Shoveller

Are you arguing that character (1) in the diagram ("intramandibular joint") is convergence and not a synapomorphy?

My problem with snake systematics is that the organisms themselves are so extremely morphologically specialized and reduced that it's difficult to find enough characters to put together a decent analysis. Never mind the difficulties associated with defining characters and avoiding over-weighting the importance of various features. Snakes and their relatives have a wide variety of lifestyles that result in numerous specializations. We aren't even sure scolecophidians are 'primitive'... they may be highly derived and closer to vipers than the base of the tree (the molecular data remains inconclusive).

This one, fragmentary specimen that Longrich et al. have found is MUCH younger than the oldest known snakes (Dinilysia is 20 million years older and lacks any of the primitive features associated with basal snake morphology). Why does Longrich's argument all of a sudden override the occurrence of older aquatic snakes with legs such as Pachyrachis?

Dinodork: Oldiron_79: No love for the 60 foot cretaceous snakes that ate dinosaurs?

There would be love for it if there was such thing.

/Titanoboa =/ Cretaceous

Hum, looks like you are right, looks like it was from right after the K/T bountry like 60 million years ago, I swear I thought it was from before. Well I guess that's why I'm not a fracking paleontologist.