Ancient Lizard Missing Front Limbs Remains from a 95-million-
year-old marine creature with nubs for legs is clarifying how
some lizards shed their limbs as they crept through evolutionary
time and morphed into slinky snakes. Described in the current
issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the snake-like
lizard had a small head and willowy body. Extending 10 to 12
inches from snout to tail, the aquatic creature also sported a
lengthy neck and relatively large rear limbs. Missing were all
the bones of its forearms, including the hands and digits found
in modern lizards. The oddball creature, Adriosaurus
microbrachis, is a member of a lineage of lizards thought to be
snakes' closest relatives. “It adds to the picture we have of
what was happening 100 million years ago,” said lead researcher
Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta,
in Canada. “We now know that losing limbs isn't a new thing and
that lizards were doing it much earlier than we originally
thought.” The new fossil rev