A 380 million-year-old fossil found in Australia has filled a gap in the understanding of how fish evolved into the first land animals. John Long, lead researcher at Museum Victoria, said the perfectly preserved skeleton has revealed that fish developed features characteristic of land animals much earlier than once thought. Long said: "We've got a fish from the Devonian period about 380 million years ago and preserved in three-dimensional stunning perfection. "It has revealed a whole suite of characters that link it to the higher land animals or tetrapods, so it's filling in a blank in evolution we didn't know...
