Strange Ancient Fish Had Front And Back Legs

Live Science

This 375-million-year-old fish, the closest known relative of the ancestors of limbed animals such as humans, likely evolved the foundation for rear legs even before the move to land, researchers say.

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00:00Music

00:16And the name of this missing link is Titalik rosei.

00:20It means large, shallow water fish in the Nunavut language of northern Canada.

00:25The fossilised bones of Titalik show just how much it is a missing link between fish and animals.

00:31It had scales and fins like a fish, but its bones are very similar to ours of our bodies today.

00:37This is the shoulder bone, and you can see the socket where the arm fitted in.

00:42This, although it's short and stubby, is the humerus, the bone of the upper arm here.

00:48These two are the radius and ulna, the two bones of the lower arm.

00:52There are wrist bones here, but instead of fingers, because it not yet evolved properly,

00:57there are rays like the fins of a fish.

01:00It's one of those fossils that shows us a stage where we've acquired some of the features of a major group,

01:07but not all of them.

01:08So, in a sense, it's equivalent to that proto-bird called Archaeopteryx,

01:14which has got some features of reptiles. It's got a long tail, it's got teeth and so on.

01:20But it's also got feathers and wings, so it's got bird features as well.

01:24So, it's that kind of combination of characters.

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