sea serpents

• sea serpents

60:1.9140,000,000 years ago, sud­denly and with only the hint of the two pre­rep­til­ian an­ces­tors that de­vel­oped in Africa dur­ing the pre­ced­ing epoch, the rep­tiles ap­peared in full-fledged form. They de­vel­oped rapidly, soon yield­ing croc­o­diles, scaled rep­tiles, and even­tu­ally both sea ser­pents and fly­ing rep­tiles. Their tran­si­tion an­ces­tors speed­ily dis­ap­peared.

60:2.10This con­tin­ued to be, pre-em­i­nently, the age of the di­no­saurs. They so over­ran the land that two species had taken to the wa­ter for sus­te­nance dur­ing the pre­ced­ing pe­riod of sea en­croach­ment. These sea ser­pents rep­re­sent a back­ward step in evo­lu­tion. While some new species are pro­gress­ing, cer­tain strains re­main sta­tion­ary and oth­ers grav­i­tate back­ward, re­vert­ing to a for­mer state. And this is what hap­pened when these two types of rep­tiles for­sook the land.

60:2.11As time passed, the sea ser­pents grew to such size that they be­came very slug­gish and even­tu­ally per­ished be­cause they did not have brains large enough to af­ford pro­tec­tion for their im­mense bod­ies. Their brains weighed less than two ounces not­with­stand­ing the fact that these huge ichthyosaurs some­times grew to be fifty feet long, the ma­jor­ity be­ing over thirty-five feet in length. The ma­rine crocodil­ians were also a re­ver­sion from the land type of rep­tile, but un­like the sea ser­pents, these an­i­mals al­ways re­turned to the land to lay their eggs.

61:2.11Like the land ser­pents of a pre­vi­ous age which be­took them­selves to the seas, now a whole tribe of pla­cen­tal mam­mals de­serted the land and took up their res­i­dence in the oceans. And they have ever since re­mained in the sea, yield­ing the mod­ern whales, dol­phins, por­poises, seals, and sea li­ons.

60:2.9110,000,000 years ago the po­ten­tials of ma­rine life were con­tin­u­ing to un­fold. The sea urchin was one of the out­stand­ing mu­ta­tions of this epoch. Crabs, lob­sters, and the mod­ern types of crus­taceans ma­tured. Marked changes oc­curred in the fish fam­ily, a stur­geon type first ap­pear­ing, but the fe­ro­cious sea ser­pents, de­scended from the land rep­tiles, still in­fested all the seas, and they threat­ened the de­struc­tion of the en­tire fish fam­ily.