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.

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.

00:37This 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.

01:28But almost there's a kind of a very simple place that we've acquired the entire room that is.

01:33So, there is another thing that we've acquired.

01:35And, of course, we see that this is so important,

01:37and this is a kind of what we've known for.

01:39Like a mini vapor, we have a whole bunch of stuff within a minute.

01:42And so, as the whole thing is, this is such a great time.

01:44So, it's kind of the whole thing that we're going to enjoy it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended