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Studying how snakes got legless
BBC ^ | 8 February 2011 | Jonathan Amos

Posted on 02/08/2011 9:57:23 AM PST by Natufian

A 95-million-year-old fossil is helping scientists understand how snakes lost their legs through evolutionary time.

Found in Lebanon, the specimen is one of only three examples of an ancient snake with preserved leg bones.

One rear leg is clearly visible but researchers had to use a novel X-ray technique to examine another leg hidden inside the fossil rock.

Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the team says the snake records an early stage in limb loss.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: evolution; godsgravesglyphs; science; snakes
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To: bmwcyle; RoadGumby

So RoadGumby thinks God told Moses he screwed up on the original snake design and removed their legs.

And bmwcycle brings up something we all forgot. God ALSO took away snakes’ ability to talk and to process language, perhaps around the same time he took away their legs.

Furthermore, I don’t know of any snakes that can subsist on eating dust either.

So... We can believe all those silly lyricisms written by bronze-age goat herders with no understanding of modern biology, or we can actually learn something and become fascinated by it for what it is.

It’s everyone’s choice.


61 posted on 02/09/2011 10:42:20 AM PST by whattajoke (Let's keep Conservatism real.)
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To: whattajoke

Lean not into your own understanding.

Yeah, it’s your choice. Wrong, but your choice.


62 posted on 02/09/2011 11:28:10 AM PST by RoadGumby (For God so loved the world)
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To: whattajoke

You must be reading Obamas bible.


63 posted on 02/09/2011 11:37:37 AM PST by RoadGumby (For God so loved the world)
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To: artificial intelligence

“snake” isn’t the word - “serpent” is.
This includes lizard-like legged critters.

God cursed the serpent telling it that it would crawl on its belly eating dust for what it did.


64 posted on 02/09/2011 11:41:40 AM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: stormer
Your post constitutes a

argument.

Yep, you sure made a point! Against your own definition of your opponents' viewpoint.

65 posted on 02/09/2011 11:44:12 AM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: RoadGumby

If the spurs “serve a function”, then they are not vestigial... just sayin’.


66 posted on 02/09/2011 11:45:23 AM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: RoadGumby

You’re being nice...

There are so many logic fallacies bound up in the “you don’t believe like I do so you must hate science” that I could be here all day.

“Discerning Truth” is a great book, BTW.


67 posted on 02/09/2011 11:47:50 AM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: Lurker

Who witnessed molecules to man, particles to people, and goo to you?


68 posted on 02/09/2011 11:48:37 AM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: MrB

Whether or not the spurs serve a function is not my contention. The Fact that they are refered to as ‘vestigial’ in an ‘evolutionary’ sense is.

The Bible being the Truth that it is, I am very willing to say that snakes had legs. And they were eliminated from snakes because of the serpents role in that original sin.


69 posted on 02/09/2011 11:54:59 AM PST by RoadGumby (For God so loved the world)
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To: MrB

I was trying to be nice. Evolution is not science.


70 posted on 02/09/2011 11:56:32 AM PST by RoadGumby (For God so loved the world)
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To: RoadGumby

Evolution is at least as much an amount of faith as Creation is. Actually more, because we have the Word of the Eye Witness.

“Science” is about observation and prediction - of things in the present. So neither evolution nor creation can be proven with science, since both are describing a one time event.


71 posted on 02/09/2011 12:01:40 PM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: RoadGumby

I just found this one the other day, to my embarrassment of not finding it earlier, probably because I read over it in the NIV.
The KJV of 1 Tim 6:20 explains the “science” of evolution.


72 posted on 02/09/2011 12:02:44 PM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: EternalVigilance

Actually, inalienable refers to something that cannot be taken or given away. I doesn’t have anything to do with the invisible man in the sky...


73 posted on 02/09/2011 12:27:41 PM PST by stormer
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To: MrB; RoadGumby

Of the many incorrect statements you two have propped each other up with, my favorite is “neither evolution nor creation can be proven with science, since both are describing a one time event.”

Painful. This perhaps explains why some creationists conflate their creation myth with evolutionary theory; they think (for whatever reason) that evolution happened once many moons ago and that was that.

(And they also think scientific theories are “proven,” but that’s mere semantics.)

In saying as much, one quickly exposes himself as having absolutely no idea was one is arguing against.


74 posted on 02/09/2011 12:28:32 PM PST by whattajoke (Let's keep Conservatism real.)
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To: whattajoke

Inherent behind your post is the logic fallacy of equivocation.

“we see ‘evolution’ today, so ‘evolution’ is true”

We’re not conflating evolutionary theory with creation.
You’re conflating adaptation with “molecules to man” “evolution”.

“And they also think scientific theories are “proven,” “
This would be a strawman - assigning a belief to your opponent and then beating the stuffing out of it.


75 posted on 02/09/2011 12:33:20 PM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: MrB

Think again.


76 posted on 02/09/2011 1:09:19 PM PST by stormer
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To: stormer
You present quite a formidable argument there! I applaud your eloquence!
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal logic fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

77 posted on 02/09/2011 1:20:05 PM PST by MrB (Tagline suspended for important announcement on my home page. Click my handle.)
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To: Natufian

More like they grew legs...they are called Progressives...


78 posted on 02/09/2011 1:24:12 PM PST by surfer (To err is human, to really foul things up takes a Democrat, don't expect the GOP to have the answer!)
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To: MrB

Ah yes, now I remember you MrB. You’re the guy who loves to throw up logical fallacies and pretend that impresses the rest of us; all the while failing to address any actual evolutionary issues.

Which idea from this thread do you accept? That snakes once had legs and lost them through evolutionary processes, that this one fossil is of a snake which ate something with a leg to make it look like it had a leg(!), that it’s not really a snake but a salamander(!), that God made snakes’ legs disappear “just because” and he even told Moses about this apparent design flaw, or that snakes are talking serpents and they are evil and god punished them by making them crawl on their bellies and eat dirt?

You know my answer... What’s yours?

I have but one more question that I’ve been asking creationists on here for years and years and years: You state that you accept “adaptation.” Fair enough. Can you describe to me what it is within the biology of every organism that stops those adaptations, which you accept do happen, from continuing to the point of becoming speciation.

This is a very real question. My answer is, there is none. In the simplest of terms, Adaptations over many generations are selected for and against which, again over many generations, leads to speciation, which is really all evolution is.

So you, I think, accept half of that. What stops the second part from happening?


79 posted on 02/09/2011 1:25:45 PM PST by whattajoke (Let's keep Conservatism real.)
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To: stormer

You ignore why it cannot be taken or given away. It’s because it is owned by the sovereign.

The Founders knew exactly what it meant.

How do folks like yourself feel living in a country whose battle cry of revolution was “NO KING BUT JESUS!”?


80 posted on 02/09/2011 1:53:19 PM PST by EternalVigilance (Is this a Tea Party, like the kind that happened in 1773, or the kind where they serve crumpets?)
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