From the Dallas Morning News web site:
http://www.dallasnews.com/science/
50084_SNAKELEGS17.html
'Michael Caldwell, one of the scientists who suggested Pachyrhachis was a primitive type of snake, said the new study doesn't prove that snakes didn't arise from mosasaurs. Only more fossils will help resolve the debate. Several more species of snakes with legs have been found in Israel and Lebanon and await scientific description, said Dr. Caldwell of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. 'These legged things are all over the place,' he said. 'There will be an explosion of them.''
If snakes with legs were all over the place in the Cretaceous, then it would appear that the common ancestor of these snakes had legs and/or legs were adaptive in these snakes and/or their common ancestor. My hypothesis is that they dug nests to lay eggs with those hindlegs, just like sea turtles, since their skulls are not adapted for digging. More snakes with legs will undoubtedly provide more evidence against the fossorial origin of snakes and more marine snakes from the Cretaceous will also provide greater support for the marine mosasauroid origin of snakes favored by Dr. Caldwell.
