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Nature 395, 748-749 (22 October 1998) | doi:10.1038/27332

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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.

  1. Philippe Janvier is in the Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, URA 12 CNRS, 8 Rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France.
    e-mail: Email: janvier@cimrs1.mnhn.fr