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n extremely rare "living fossil" caught by a fisherman in Indonesia is being examined by scientists. The 1.3m-long (4.3ft), 50kg (110lb) coelacanth is only the second ever to have been captured in Asia and has been described as a "significant find". An autopsy and genetic tests are now being carried out to determine more about the specimen. Coelacanths provide researchers with a window into the past; their fossil record dates back 350 million years. These fish are odd in appearance, looking almost as if they have legs because of their large-lobed fins - they are sometimes dubbed "old four legs"....

Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs and parts of the limbs that are similar to four-legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fish-like features such as a primitive jaw, fins and scales. These fossils, found on Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada, are the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The new find...

In the almost four billion years since life on earth oozed into existence, evolution has generated some marvelous metamorphoses. One of the most spectacular is surely that which produced terrestrial creatures bearing limbs, fingers and toes from water-bound fish with fins. Today this group, the tetrapods, encompasses everything from birds and their dinosaur ancestors to lizards, snakes, turtles, frogs and mammals, including us. Some of these animals have modified or lost their limbs, but their common ancestor had them -- two in front and two in back, where fins once flicked instead. The replacement of fins with limbs was a...

A fish that uses its fins to walk across the floor is causing scientists to rethink the evolution of walking on land, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at the University of Chicago observed an African lungfish using its pelvic fins "as hind legs to propel itself along the bottom of the tank," reports Victoria Gill and Jason Palmer at BBC News. This could mean that our ability to walk developed underwater—before creatures grew toes or limbs necessary to move on land—essentially rewriting hundreds of millions of years of...