University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada 18 April 1997

"Chasing the serpent in the city of God"

By Lee Elliott

The story has political intrigue, Indiana Jones type suspense, and . . . snakes with legs.

Dr. Michael Caldwell, biology, is a major news story in the April 17 New York Times, and the prestigious science magazine Nature with his discovery of an evolutionary missing link-- a snake with "a couple of toes at least." The snake fossils have been coiled in a Jerusalem museum for a number of years without attracting much notice from researchers. "They thought they were perhaps very odd lizards," says Caldwell.

Workers in the quarry by the West Bank city of Ramallah had been collecting the unusual fossils for years as curiosities. The quarry had been known as a spectacular fish fossil locale, says Caldwell. When Haas went there in search of fish, he "discovered a handful of these snake-like things stuck around the walls of the houses."

While scientists have long known that snakes, like whales, evolved from creatures with legs, says Caldwell, this is the first actual proof. Scientists have proposed every possible form of lizard as the ancestor of the snake, but having seen the creature, Caldwell says he and his colleague, Dr. Michael Lee of Sidney University, Australia, believe the Jerusalem museum snake actually descended from the appropriately named group of marine lizards-Mosasaurus.

Why the furor over a tiny skeleton encased in rock? "The image of the snake is so entrenched in our mythology . . . from the Garden of Eden onward," says Caldwell. To further strengthen the mythological link, the New York Times reporter notes modern descendants of the Mosasaurus include the Komodo dragon.

Caldwell has entitled an upcoming Chicago lecture, "Chasing the Serpent in the City of God." He may need to also include the Medieval map maker's warning on uncharted territory, "There be dragons here . . ."

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