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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.
Transcript
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.
00:38This 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
01:07group,
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.
01:17It'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.
01:29A very strange and wise fighters.
01:31Where's the
01:31part of the planet, too?
01:37Why'd you find someone for the enemy?
01:37Where an enemy?
01:37Who's the enemy?
01:37Where are the enemy?
01:38Or what is this?
01:38Who's the enemy?
01:39It's the enemy.
01:39Where can you find the enemy?
01:39You
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