Spine of early crawling fish Tiktaalik was becoming more like a land animal’s

Scans show that the spine and ribs of Tiktaalik, one of the first fish to crawl on land, had features that are more like those of early land animals than fish

By Michael Le Page

A CT scan of a fossil of Tiktaalik, one of the first fish to crawl on land, has revealed more features of its body that are intermediate between fish and land-dwelling animals. In particular, they show that its fins were becoming connected to its spine, a feature of limbs in land vertebrates, but not of fins in fish.

“That’s an unexpected result given the way we’ve reconstructed this animal in the past,” says Thomas Stuart at Pennsylvania State University.

Neil …