Snakes, as a reptile, often give people a sense of panic and nervousness. So in the course of millions of years of evolution, what drastic changes have the evolutionary process of snakes undergone? It was once thought that the most primitive snake must have had feet. For as one comes to think of the Bible as a form of historical record, one finds that in the Bible, a serpent tempted Eve to taste the fruit of the tree of wisdom, but was punished by God, and from then on could only walk on its belly and eat the soil for a living. So, if the original snake had legs, what is the evidence?
Not long ago, archaeologists found a fossil specimen in Israel. This fossil is strong evidence that snakes are legged animals. At first, paleontologists thought the specimen should be a lizard fossil, but after studying and comparing, it was surprising to find that it was a primitive snake. Known as the ridge snake, the fossilized snake is about ninety centimeters long, lived in the shallow sea more than nine million years ago, and although it is short and slender, it has strong limbs.
In fact, this is not the first time that people have found ridgeback snakes, such fossils have been unearthed in the West Bank more than twenty years ago, but they were defined by people at that time as lizard specimens. After this, relevant foreign scholars have studied the fossil snake with about three centimeters long hind limbs, and found that the skull of the snake is narrow, its structure is light and simple, and the number and connection characteristics of the spine are also consistent with the snake. Snakes with hind limbs can't help but think of the legendary Jiao, the ancient saying "snake repairs a thousand years to transform jiao, jiao repair a thousand years for a dragon", it is said that jiao often lives in the river low or pond, if you can boldly guess, this fossil snake may be the prototype of the legendary jiao.
Although it is only a fossil specimen, it is of great significance for those involved in studying the evolutionary history of snakes. This is evidence that primitive snakes have limbs like other reptiles, and the discovery of fossils is also conducive to further understanding the reasons for the disappearance of snakes' hind limbs and whether primitive snakes are related to modern lizards, and whether lizards are another evolutionary species of primitive snakes. However, the truth can only wait for researchers to discover more.