Photo Credit: brianbrarian via Compfight cc
Last week on Fossil Friday, I showed you one of the most important fossils of all time. Though you were all quick to identify it as Tiktaalik roseae, aka the "fishapod," Britton got it first. Tiktaalik was first found in the Canadian Arctic, and dates back to 375 million years ago. From the University of Chicago:
"Its discovery sheds light on a pivotal point in the history of life on Earth: when the very first fish ventured out onto land. Tiktaalik looks like a cross between the primitive fish it lived amongst and the first four-legged animals...Tiktaalik lived about 12 million years before the first tetrapods (which are approximately 363 million years old). So, the existence of tetrapod features in a fish like Tiktaalik is significant because it marks the earliest appearance of these novel features in the fossil record."
You can see Neil Shubin, one of the lead investigators, talk about finding Tiktaalik and the importance of it here. Kudos to Britton for getting this one first! Stay tuned for more fossil fun this Friday!
