Editor's Summary

9 November 2006

Tetrapods: the long march

The evolutionary transition from water to land exerts a continuing fascination, heightened by recent discoveries of transitional fossils in Canada and the reinterpretation as tetrapods (or near-tetrapods) of fossils once classified as fishes. But signs of land life are detectable even further back. A spectacularly preserved 380-million-year old fossil of the fish Gogonasus from the Devonian of Australia is fish-like in many respects, yet features of its ear and limbs are unexpectedly advanced.

Letter: An exceptional Devonian fish from Australia sheds light on tetrapod origins

John A. Long, Gavin C. Young, Tim Holland, Tim J. Senden and Erich M. G. Fitzgerald

doi:10.1038/nature05243

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