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Nature 395, 748-749 (22 October 1998) | doi:10.1038/27332
Palaeontology: Forerunners of four legs
Philippe Janvier1
Any textbook or popular book on palaeontology published since the 1930s tells us that the four-legged land vertebrates, or tetrapods, arose by the end of Devonian times (about 365 million years ago) from a group of lobe-finned fishes, the osteolepiforms. This is usually illustrated by a dramatic reconstruction of one of the best-known osteolepiforms, Eusthenopteron foordi, crawling out of a pond on its paired fins, to show how these could be the precursors of limbs.
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