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Travel back far enough in your genealogy, and you will run into a fish. Before about 370 million years ago, our ancestors were scaly creatures that lived in the sea, swimming with fins and using gills to get oxygen from the water. And then, over the course of millions of years, they began moving ashore, adapting to the terrestrial realm. They became tetrapods, a lineage that would eventually produce today’s amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. As scientists have unearthed fossils from those early days, one lesson has come through ever more loud and clear: the transition was not a single...

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...

BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists combing through undersea fauna off Indonesia's Papua province said Monday they had discovered dozens of new species, including a shark that walks on its fins and a shrimp that looks like a praying mantis. The team from U.S.-based Conservation International also warned that the area — known as Bird's Head Seascape — is under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches and called on Indonesia's government to do more to protect it."It's one of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes and seascapes on the planet," said Mark Erdmann, a senior adviser of...

Another fishy missing link Posted: April 15, 2006 © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com It's been a week since the scientific world went gaga over a fish called "Tiktaalik," which is being billed as the missing link between water and land animals. The paleontoligists say the fossils they date to 383 million years ago show how land creatures first arose from the sea. Tiktaalik, they say, lived in shallow swampy waters and had the body of a fish but the jaws, ribs and limb-like fins of so-called "early mammals." "Tiktaalik represents a transitory creature between water and land," explained Farish Jenkins Jr. of...