It's an old story. An animal or plant is discovered in sedimentary rocks by paleontologists and it pushes the organism's origin further back by many millions of years—but it's always a plant or animal already known to science. Granted, some of these fossilized creatures are extinct, but that's no indication they evolved.

This time snakes are the subject of a recent, unexpected discovery that supposedly pushes their first appearance back an additional 65 million years.¹ Evolutionists were shocked at the discovery of four snake fossils, the oldest (Eophis underwoodi) dating back to "167 million years" by evolutionary dating. Prior to these discoveries the oldest snake fossil was a mere "102 million years old."

Creation scientists maintain snakes have always been snakes. Evolutionists say snakes evolved from some non-snake ancestor—evidently much longer than 167 million years ago. The problem is the complete lack of evidence of "modern" snakes having evolved from non-snake ancestors. Fossils of transitional snake-like creatures do not exist; there are only questionable theories and conjecture.

Through the decades, evolutionists have been at a bit of a loss as to the origin of snakes.

• "Unfortunately, the fossil history of the snakes is very fragmentary, so that it is necessary to infer much of their evolution from the comparative anatomy of modern forms."²
• "The origin of the snakes is still an unsolved problem."³
• "Zoologists debate the evolutionary origin of the snakes."⁴
• Even as recently as this year, 2015, evolutionists are still at a loss, "The debate is far from resolved."⁵

Is it any wonder the theme of no real evidence of evolutionary change is seen throughout another article regarding these same snake fossils? "The snakes in these groups ‘are still very much snakes, there is no question about the affinity of these living forms….'"⁶ Earlier in the same article the writer stated, "The remains seem to be most similar to modern snakes that belong to rather obscure groups, and are thought to be somewhat primitive members of the snake family, such as a group called the anilioids…." But evolutionist Allaby never refers to the Family Aniliidae as being "primitive."⁷ The debate continues.

As long as secular scientists trust in Darwinism, the origin of any kind of animal or plant will be far from resolved. Perhaps snake evolutionists should scale back their old story.

References

1. Dunham, W. Remarkable fossils push back snake origins by 65 million years. Reuters. Posted on Reuters.com on January 27, 2015, accessed January 28, 2015.
2. Colbert, E. et al. 2001. Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates, 5th Ed. New York: Wiley-Liss, 154.
3. Stahl, B. 1985. Vertebrate History. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,318.
4. Miller, S. and J. Harley. 2013. Zoology. McGraw-Hill, 357.
5. Benton, M. 2015. Vertebrate Paleontology. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 252.
6. Blaszczak-Boxe, A. 2015. Oldest Known Snake Fossils Identified. Live Science. Posted January 27, 2015, accessed February 2, 2015.
7. Allaby, M. 2020. Oxford Dictionary of Zoology. UK: Oxford University Press, 33.

*Mr. Sherwin is Research Associate, Senior Lecturer, and Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on February 9, 2015.