Origin of snakes

[jaster]

Http://www.kingsnake.com/aho/pdf/menu3/rickshine/originofsnakes.pdf

This is an interesting paper I found up on the kingsnake.com forums. It talks about modern snake eyes being most similar to aquatic vertebrates suggesting that scolecophidia may not be the "most primitive" in Serpentes (or at least that's what I can gather from it).

I enjoyed the paper and the new intelligence, but it doesn't help fitting snakes in with lizards...

 

[Nathan]

Interesting, but not compelling. It is telling that the aquatic forms placed closest to snakes in the eye anatomy tree are all groups with reduced eyes and burrowing or mud-diving habits- caecilians, lungfishes, and lampreys.

Perhaps of note- mososaurs fall into the varanoid-snake radiation and were marine species. If snakes do turn out to be marine in origin, mososaurs may well be their sister lineage.