Editor's Summary
6 April 2006
When fins became limbs
The transition between fishes and limbed vertebrates, or tetrapods, occurred over 370 million years ago and required changes to virtually the entire body. Sensational fossil finds, and reinterpretations of old ones, have radically altered thinking on this topic in the past 20 years. But the transition itself – the very point where fishes became tetrapods – remains obscure. What fossils there are tend to be incomplete or badly preserved. All that changes with the discovery of remarkable new fossils from the late Devonian of Canada of a near-complete transitional form preserved in the round. It's a fish with fins, but fins that flexed and extended like arms and hands. It has tetrapod-like ribs, a mobile neck and wrist. The impact of this discovery will be felt far and wide in evolutionary biology. On the cover, the fossil as found emerges from under a log as it might have in life in a shallow-water habitat.
News and Views: Palaeontology: A firm step from water to land
A project designed to discover fossils that illuminate the transition between fishes and land vertebrates has delivered the goods. At a stroke, our picture of that transition is greatly improved.
Per Erik Ahlberg and Jennifer A. Clack
doi:10.1038/440747a
Article: A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan
Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr
doi:10.1038/nature04639
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (523K) | Supplementary information
Article: The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb
Neil H. Shubin, Edward B. Daeschler and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr
doi:10.1038/nature04637
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (899K) | Supplementary information
