A report dated 9 April 2004 on the NTVMSNBC.COM news
portal, titled “The evolution of snakes began on land,” dealt with
a genetic analysis performed by Blair Hedges, a Penn State biology professor,
and the postdoctoral fellow Nicolas Vidal. In their research, to be published
in the 7 May 2004 edition of the journal Biology Letters, Vidal and
Hedges compared the DNAs of 17 families of snake with lizard DNAs and determined
that from the point of view of genetic similarity snakes were closer to land-based
lizards than to marine ones. Based on this, the researchers claimed that snakes
evolved not in the ocean, but on the land.
However, this claim about the alleged evolution of snakes constitutes
no scientific evidence for the theory of evolution. The researchers “interpret”
the similarities in the genes in the light of a belief in evolution, which they
have adopted as a dogma right from the outset. What needs to be examined when
testing the thesis that snakes evolved in a process lasting hundreds of millions
of years is the fossil record. This record reveals that there is not a single
scientific finding to show that snakes did emerge through evolution. Like all
other living groups, snakes appear suddenly in the fossil record, together with
all their particular features and with no ancestral forms behind them.
The oldest snakes found in the fossil record have no “transitional
form” characteristics and are no different to present-day specimens. The
oldest known snake fossil is Dinilysia, found in Upper Cretaceous rocks
in South America. Robert Carroll, an expert in vertebrate palaeontology, accepts
that this creature “shows a fairly advanced stage of evolution,”1
in other words that it already possesses the characteristic features
of snakes.
Despite the lack of any fossil record, the origin of the snakes
are the subject of an intense debate amongst evolutionists. Some evolutionists
maintain that snakes evolved on land, while others suggest that they evolved
from marine lizards. Neither side has any fossil evidence on which to base its
claims. Despite the lack of evidence there is constant speculation about the
origin of snakes, and fictitious claims have been emerging from one camp or
the other for the last 130 years. 2
Indeed, this latest claim by Hedges and Vidal has also come in
for objections. Michael Caldwell, a palaeontologist and snake expert from University
of Alberta, has said that the findings from this research are ambiguous and
far from producing any conclusions. He describes the claim in question as being
no more than an “educated guess.” 3 (Not
surprisingly, this criticism is ignored in the NTVMSNBC.COM report.)
An article in the September 2003 edition of Natural History magazine,
the organ of the American Museum of Natural History, contained the following
statements about the origin of snakes:
The [evolutionary] descent of snakes is a contentious topic in
vertebrate biology and is not likely to be settled without more hard evidence.
4
As we have seen, the claim regarding the origin of snakes on NTVMSNBC.COM
consists of new, questionable speculation by evolutionists that lacks any scientific
foundation.
NTVMSNBC.COM’s Darwinist Prejudices
The way that NTVMSNBC.COM sets out this report is worth examining,
since it bears the typical hallmarks of Darwinist propaganda. The evolutionist
claim in question is portrayed as a scientific fact in the story headline (The
evolution of snakes began on land), and Darwinist myths are rehearsed in the
caption—to the effect that snakes evolved 365 million years ago from four-legged
coastal lizards that emerged onto the land from the sea.
This is a style which Darwinist publications frequently employ
in reporting stories about evolution, and can be seen in this report. Although
the subject of the evolution of snakes is portrayed as a proven fact in the
headline, the uncertainty over the matter only appears in the final sentence
of the report:
Vidal and Hedges said that the questions of the line followed
on land by evolution and when snakes began to separate from the lizards are
still unclear.
Bearing in mind that many readers will make do with only reading
the headline and caption accompanying such a report, then they may well form
the impression that this story is a scientific fact, rather than an uncertain
claim.
Conclusion:
We would remind the NTVMSNBC.COM management to accept that
Darwinism is a theory devoid of any scientific foundation, and invite them to
stop misleading their readers and to abandon their blind support for the theory,
which they provide because they regard it as compatible with their own world
views.
1. Robert Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology
and Evolution, p. 235
2. Dennis O'Brien, “By land or by sea: a snake debate,” The
Baltimore Sun, 9 February 2004
3. Ibid.
4. “Terrible Lizards of the Sea,” Natural History, September
2003
