how the snake lost its legs

Evolution moves in many and mysterious ways, but it struck me recently that I was seeing quite a few papers on animals losing legs, from snakes to whales. So I rounded these up in a feature about gaining and losing legs, which is out now:


Step changes in evolution

Current Biology Volume 30, Issue 2, 20 January 2020, Pages R51-R53

FREE access to full text and PDF download



In the Devonian period (419–359 million years ago), the first land-living vertebrates evolved from fish ancestors. (Photo: Dmitry Bogdanov/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).)