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Credit: Pixabay / Tahlia Stanton |
Some genes are regulated according to where they are located in a body, so the gene can work in one place but is switched off in another. Those affecting limbs did not interfere with the ability of snakes to reproduce (obviously). Purveyors of particles-to-python evolution cannot explain why snakes didn't simply die out because of their loss of abilities. They also have to deal with the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record.
All snakes today are limbless, and from written historical records going back thousands of years, that is also how they are described. The fossil record of snakes is robust, and even baby snakes have been found in Cretaceous amber, conventionally dated at 99 MY. . . . But one thing that can be stated with certainty is that snakes were cursed, and genetic insight is beginning to reveal just how extensively.To read the entire article, move on over to "Snakes Appear to Live a Cursed Life". The video below has some amazing camera work:
A recent study was published purporting to explain how snakes lost their limbs, and it revealed some surprising findings. The study mentioned above not only probed the question of snake limbs but also sightless subterranean mammals. In the latter case, there was a widespread loss of genes responsible for different components of sight, but in the case of snakes, there was only one gene lost (HoxD12), but hundreds of limb regulatory elements were substantially altered and non/miss-expressed.
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