Can someone help me find (herpetology)...

[HazyRigby]

I was watching the Discovery channel tonight, and they were discussing the evolution of snakes and lizards. They pointed out that there's an interesting "lizard" that has no external legs, but has vestigal, skeletal legs on the inside if its body. Fascinating! Can anyone point me to a site describing this evolution-in-action animal?

 

[LadyShea]

Here's some very basic info (that mentions the vestigal limbs at the very bottom) http://kaweahoaks.com/html/lizard_legless.htm

Quite a few sites came up when I searched for "legless lizard"

 

[HazyRigby]

Thanks, Lady! Wow, what interesting animals lizards are.

 

[Sky]

Are you sure it was a lizard and not a snake?

 

[Havoc]

Vestigial body parts are very common. Many legless lizards have vestigial legs. Primitive snakes (Boa, Slow Worm, etc) have vestigial limbs in some cases including vestigial shoulder and hip bones . All Whales and Dolphins have vestigial hind limbs which are completely enclosed within the body wall and fingers that are fused into flippers. Humans have a vestigial pyloric ceacum which is now called the appendix. Horses and other hooved mammals commonly retain vestigial bones to support non-existant toes. These are only a few of hundreds of examples. Almost every plant and animal species has some example of vestigial structures.

Vestigial body parts make no sense in an intelligent design biology, but it certainly does make sense in an evolved biology. Vestigial structures never reflect the best way to design a structure but they do make good examples of what happens when you are forced to make do with what you have.

 

[LadyShea]

Snakes do not have external ear openings nor eyelids, legless lizards do. There are some other differences as well, legless lizards tails can break off in various places and regenerate (which is why they received the nickname "glass snake" it was believed they break into pieces when picked up), snakes tails do not break and cannot regenerate if they are cut somehow.

Legless lizards have vestigal hind legs and shoulder and pelvic bones, only a few snakes have vestigal pelvic shoulder bones.

 

[Havoc]

I'm sorry LadyShea, I'm having difficulty determining whether you agree with my reply or not, or replying to another post entirely.

 

[LadyShea]

I hit reply after reading the question "Are you sure it wasn't a snake"...I sometimes forget to check the rest of the thread...my bad :o

Looks like we agreed tho