• Wrists, ankles and digits distinguish tetrapod limbs from fins, but direct evidence on the origin of these features has been unavailable. (nature.com)
  • The origin of limbs probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik . (nature.com)
  • The questions is the origin of limbs, fins to legs. (freethoughtblogs.com)
  • They found many fossils, but one that changed his thinking was a fin of sauripterus, with fin rays and a core of tetrapod-like limbs. (freethoughtblogs.com)
  • Fossilized fish from the late Devonian period, roughly 375 million years ago, are shedding light on the evolution of fins as they began to transition into limbs fit for walking on land. (futurity.org)
  • They could then use these models to infer how the fins worked and changed as they evolved into limbs. (futurity.org)
  • Dermal rays form most of the surface area of many fish fins but were completely lost in the earliest creatures with limbs. (futurity.org)
  • When they examined genes that are necessary for the evolution of fins in zebrafish (a ray-finned fish that is a distant relative of coelacanth fishes) and compared them with the gene that regulates the development of limbs in mice, researchers found that zebrafish lacked the genetic mechanisms that are necessary for the development of fingers. (expertsvar.se)
  • The evidence offers the earliest record of vestigial limbs-once used in an animal's evolutionary past but that has lost its original function-- in a fossil lizard. (phys.org)
  • There was a moment when I said, 'I think we stumbled on a new fossil illustrating some portion of the aquatic process of losing limbs,'" said Caldwell. (phys.org)
  • The most well known ancient fossil snakes also kept their hind limbs. (phys.org)
  • Tiktaalik also gives biologists a new understanding of how fins turned into limbs. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Unearthed in 2004 on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut, this transitional fossil has been critical in piecing together a picture of how fins became limbs - or, of how terrestrial, limbed vertebrates arose from aquatic, lobe-finned ancestors. (ansp.org)
  • Dinosaurs were animals with four limbs, although not all walked on all four legs. (howstuffworks.com)
  • The key step, so we think, was when the lobe-shaped fins of some bony fish evolved into limbs around 375 million years ago. (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • Here we describe the pectoral appendage of a member of the sister group of tetrapods, Tiktaalik roseae , which is morphologically and functionally transitional between a fin and a limb. (nature.com)
  • The expanded array of distal endochondral bones and synovial joints in the fin of Tiktaalik is similar to the distal limb pattern of basal tetrapods. (nature.com)
  • The fin of Tiktaalik was capable of a range of postures, including a limb-like substrate-supported stance in which the shoulder and elbow were flexed and the distal skeleton extended. (nature.com)
  • Articulated pectoral fins of Tiktaalik roseae . (nature.com)
  • Reconstruction of the right pectoral fin of Tiktaalik . (nature.com)
  • Reconstruction of fin postures of Tiktaalik . (nature.com)
  • He first discovered a fossil of Tiktaalik in the Canadian Arctic in 2004, and now he's co-authored a new study on the recent discovery of another related species. (wypr.org)
  • Qikiqtania was found on the same trip, but the fossil went mostly unstudied while the team focused on Tiktaalik. (nhpr.org)
  • The arrangement of bones and joints in these animals' fins was starting to resemble arms and legs, which would have allowed animals like Tiktaalik to prop themselves up in shallow water and survive on mudflats. (nhpr.org)
  • The imaging tools allowed the researchers to construct digital 3D models of the entire fin of the fishapod Tiktaalik roseae and its relatives in the fossil record for the first time. (futurity.org)
  • Tiktaalik may have been able to support most of its weight with its fins and perhaps even used them to venture out of the water for short trips across shallows and mudflats. (futurity.org)
  • By seeing the entire fin of Tiktaalik we gain a clearer picture of how it propped itself up and moved about. (futurity.org)
  • This provides further information that allows us to understand how an animal like Tiktaalik was using its fins in this transition," Stewart says. (futurity.org)
  • H. bergmanni was found in the same area as Tiktaalik roseae, a famous fish fossil found in 2006 by Daeschler, who described it as a "textbook example" of vertebrate transition to terrestrial ecosystems. (thetriangle.org)
  • Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action - like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Tiktaalik - the name means "a large, shallow-water fish" in the Inuit language Inuktikuk - shows that the evolution of animals from living in water to living on land happened gradually, with fish first living in shallow water. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animal both in terms of its anatomy and its way of life," said Neil Shubin, a biologist at the University of Chicago, and a leader of the expedition which found Tiktaalik. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Believing the lobe-finned Tiktaalik became extinct 400 million years before its descendents crawled across the land on all fours, many evolutionists maintain its fins were antecedents to legs. (answersingenesis.org)
  • However, the fleshy fins of Tiktaalik do not attach to the bony pelvis and so could not support weight for walking. (answersingenesis.org)
  • The current research seeks to get around the obvious problems with the fishy identity of Tiktaalik by experimenting with the regulatory genes of various animals to see if they are interchangeable. (answersingenesis.org)
  • David Menton, " Tiktaalik and the Fishy Story of Walking Fish, Part 2," Answers in Genesis, May 23, 2007, https://answersingenesis.org/extinct-animals/tiktaalik-and-the-fishy-story-of-walking-fish-part-2/ . (answersingenesis.org)
  • Just in the past few years, paleontologists have unearthed an astonishing fossil, called Tiktaalik, that is intermediate between fish and amphibians. (newrepublic.com)
  • Tiktaalik is supposed to be a transitional fossil showing how fish evolved into amphibians. (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • Tiktaalik ," he says, "was a great example of a prediction that you could make and go out and validate" - by discovering the right fossil. (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • SUMMERS: So while one had fins with bones more similar to a human and venturing out onto land, the other was going back to the water, likely because it found advantages for survival in the water again. (wypr.org)
  • Fins and legs look very different, with fins having rays and many bones, while legs have few bones in a fixed pattern. (freethoughtblogs.com)
  • Much of the research on fins during this key transitional stage focuses on the large, distinct bones and pieces of cartilage that correspond to those of our upper arm, forearm, wrist, and digits. (futurity.org)
  • Researchers often overlook these pieces because they can fall apart when the animals are fossilized or because fossil preparators remove them intentionally to reveal the larger bones of the endoskeleton. (futurity.org)
  • Pairs of bones actually form fin rays. (futurity.org)
  • Its fin contains bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. (uncommondescent.com)
  • They consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales and fins, even the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively few instances. (newworldencyclopedia.org)
  • Furthermore, the bones in the fins of these fossil fish do not resemble digits. (answersingenesis.org)
  • In Nature, evolutionist fish experts Ahlberg and Clack pointed out that "although these small distal bones bear some resemblance to tetrapod digits in terms of their function and range of movement, they are still very much components of a fin. (answersingenesis.org)
  • The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals. (femalefirst.co.uk)
  • The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Zoology, adds to growing evidence that digits in humans and other land creatures are the equivalent of fin bones in fish. (ex-christian.net)
  • Johanson and her colleagues found that the genes involved in creating the Australian lungfish's fins made proteins in a nearly identical pattern as in tetrapods by acting on the small fin bones but not the rest of the limb. (ex-christian.net)
  • Biologists Neil Shubin and Igor Schneider have swapped genes which regulate limb and fin development between living fish and mice. (answersingenesis.org)
  • Researchers studying the Australian lungfish Neoceradotus found one of its fin-sprouting genes also guides the growth of digits in land vertebrates â€" creatures with backbones. (ex-christian.net)
  • People have found comparable genes and gene-expression patterns in the fins of ray-fin fishes and also sharks, so it seems like the pattern goes very, very deep in vertebrate history," said study team member Zerina Johanson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. (ex-christian.net)
  • In the 11 years since the naming of A. ramidus by University of California Berkeley anthropologist Tim White and colleagues, only a handful of fossils from the species have been found, and only at two sites -- the Middle Awash and Gona, both in Ethiopia. (sciencedaily.com)
  • There's only a handful of fossils that are preserved with that kind of detail," said lead researcher, Christopher Whalen, from the American Museum of Natural History. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Unlike dolphins, these fish do not feel the bubbles, because they have bony fins without nerve endings. (wikipedia.org)
  • The presence of both bony armor and a tail fin highlights the remarkable diversity of Jurassic-era crocodiles. (weather.com)
  • The other fossil of note is one of the bony plates from the neck region of a medium-sized Dunkleosteus . (cincymuseum.org)
  • The coelacanth is classed as a sarcopterygian, a term meaning fleshy fins. (zmescience.com)
  • Recently, scientists and filmmakers captured a feeding frenzy on video of some 300 fin whales off the coast of Antarctica. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • Scientists and filmmakers recorded the massive fin whale aggregation as part of a new series streaming on Disney+. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • Now, however, scientists and filmmakers report an encouraging finding: video proof of a feeding frenzy of some 300 fin whales off the coast of Antarctica. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • Prior to this year, the largest number of fin whales feeding in one place officially recorded by scientists stood at a paltry 13 animals. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • After the more recent analysis, the scientists discovered a particular never-before-identified vertebra that forms part of the tail fin. (weather.com)
  • Together with information about fin development in sharks, paddlefish, and Australian lungfish, the scientists can now definitively conclude that fingers were not something new in tetrapods. (expertsvar.se)
  • Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago. (uncommondescent.com)
  • The scientists who discovered it say the animal was a predator with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head, and a body that grew up to 2.75 metres (9ft) long. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Scientists have previously been able to trace the transition of fish into limbed animals only crudely over the millions of years they anticipate the process took place. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University led several expeditions into the inhospitable icy desert to search for the fossils. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Scientists in Australia studied the fossil and found the structure of its fin had similarities to the human hand, with the skeleton featuring an arm, a forearm and finger-like appendages. (femalefirst.co.uk)
  • Scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and seven other institutions have unearthed skeletal fossils of a human ancestor believed to have lived about 4.5 million years ago. (sciencedaily.com)
  • The fossils, described in this week's Nature (Jan. 20), will help scientists piece together the mysterious transformation of primitive chimp-like hominids into more human forms. (sciencedaily.com)
  • The scientists believe the fossils belong to nine individuals of the species A. ramidus. (sciencedaily.com)
  • The scientists used argon isotope dating of volcanic materials found in the vicinity of the fossils to estimate their age. (sciencedaily.com)
  • Back then, scientists didn't quite know what to make of these fossils. (snexplores.org)
  • Scientists have found fossils of animals with tails dating back hundreds of millions of years. (techbords.com)
  • Although Robison called the fossil find "remarkable," he stressed that scientists didn't need to search the rock record to find captivating new marine species. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Scientists imagine what a missing link might look like, and then try to find fossils that can be made to appear to fit the pre-conceived notion. (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • The study expands paleontologists' understanding of this period in evolutionary history by showing that animals weren't just evolving from water-based fish to land-based tetrapods. (nhpr.org)
  • Fossil cast of a fin from a juvenile Sauripterus taylori , a late Devonian fish with primitive features of tetrapods. (futurity.org)
  • Our fish ancestors evolved into the first four-legged animals, tetrapods, 380 million years ago. (expertsvar.se)
  • The animal lived in the Devonian era lasting from 417m to 354m years ago, and had a skull, neck, and ribs similar to early limbed animals (known as tetrapods), as well as a more primitive jaw, fins, and scales akin to fish. (uncommondescent.com)
  • They suspected that an animal which bridged the gap between fish and land-based tetrapods must have existed - but, until now, there had been scant evidence of one. (uncommondescent.com)
  • They searched in Ellesmere Island for Devonian age rocks and fossils that would reveal the history of the limb. (freethoughtblogs.com)
  • There are good Devonian rocks that were formed in kinds of environments that would have these kinds of fossil fish. (thetriangle.org)
  • Experience the stunning plant and animal fossils collected from Devonian rock found here in Pennsylvania and around the world. (ansp.org)
  • Why fossil evidence from this period, from 360 to 345 million years ago, is so sparse is still debated, but we know that it followed a mass extinction at the end of the Devonian, the Hangenberg event, that wiped out many primitive fishes. (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • Paleontologists recently discovered the partial fossils of two new species of dinosaur just outside of Casablanca. (icr.org)
  • Paleontologists have disagreed about the function of the fin on the Spinosaurus's back. (a-z-animals.com)
  • Some paleontologists believe that the Spinosaurus hunted in water because of its fin-like tail and webbed feet, which looked like large paddles. (a-z-animals.com)
  • Analysis of the Sclerocormus fossil and comparison to other fossils enabled the researchers to place it among the ancestral ichthyosaurs but separate from any previously known group. (ucdavis.edu)
  • This discovery prompted the researchers to classify it as a metriorhynchoid, a Jurassic to Early Cretaceous-era crocodile that ultimately evolved into dolphin-like animals with flippers and tail fins. (weather.com)
  • The researchers scanned specimens of these fossils while still encased in rock. (futurity.org)
  • Researchers at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University recently discovered a new species of fish fossils, Holoptychius bergmanni, that could reveal more about the evolution of some aquatic organisms that are now land organisms. (thetriangle.org)
  • Researchers say they have found the oldest known relative of octopuses and vampire squids, in a fossil dug up decades ago in Montana. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Cladogram of the pectoral fins of taxa on the tetrapod stem. (nature.com)
  • Shubin, N. The evolution of paired fins and the origin of the tetrapod limb: phylogenetic and transformational approaches. (nature.com)
  • Vorobyeva, E. I. The role of development and function in formation of "tetrapod- like" pectoral fins. (nature.com)
  • This reading was supported by the circumstance that the fossil Panderichthys, a "transitional animal" between fish and tetrapod, appeared to lack finger rudiments in their fins. (expertsvar.se)
  • Because of the similarities, we can say that fish fins have similar structures to tetrapod digits, [and that] tetrapod digits are no longer unique to the group," Johanson told LiveScience. (ex-christian.net)
  • The Bear Gulch Limestone fossil site (where this new species was found) is famous for this kind of preservation and provides incredibly rare insights about these animals. (bigthink.com)
  • The fossil of Syllipsimopodi from the Bear Gulch Limestone of Montana. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • The well-preserved 328-million-year-old fossil was discovered in Montana's Bear Gulch Limestone in 1988, but it hasn't been closely studied until now. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Fish, and other aquatic animals such as cetaceans, actively propel and steer themselves with pectoral and tail fins. (wikipedia.org)
  • Cavitation damage can also occur to the tail fins of powerful swimming marine animals, such as dolphins and tuna. (wikipedia.org)
  • Airplanes achieve similar results with small specialised fins that change the shape of their wings and tail fins. (wikipedia.org)
  • Static tail fins are used as stabilizers Engineering fins are also used as heat transfer fins to regulate temperature in heat sinks or fin radiators. (wikipedia.org)
  • Vorobyeva, E. I. & Kuznetsov, A. in Fossil Fishes as Living Animals (ed. (nature.com)
  • They saw some of the same asymmetrical differences between the top and bottom of the fins, suggesting that those changes played a larger role in the evolution of fishes. (futurity.org)
  • The development of fingers and toes in embryos of land animals is closely linked to a gene called Hoxd13. (ex-christian.net)
  • The exhibit will highlight the wealth of Late Ordovician (approximately 440 million year old) marine fossils found in the Cincinnati area for which we are world-famous. (cincymuseum.org)
  • The near-pristine fossil was found on Ellesmere Island, Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Krill: Fin whales consume large quantities of krill- small shrimp-like crustaceans found in cold, nutrient-rich waters. (danawharf.com)
  • Fin whales are found in various oceans around the world, including the North Atlantic, North Pacific, Southern Ocean, and some areas of the Indian Ocean. (danawharf.com)
  • And while discoveries are continually being made in the fossil record, there's just as much and maybe more to learn from what's out there living now that we haven't found yet. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Explore the exciting world of paleontology, stroll beneath towering fossil skeletons, and examine dinosaur anatomy up close. (ansp.org)
  • But the fossil record for cephalopods without shells is a stark contrast, because when these animals die the flesh of their bodies usually rots away, leaving very little, if anything, behind. (bigthink.com)
  • According to the fossil record, almost all life in the oceans was wiped out in a mass extinction at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago. (ucdavis.edu)
  • As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power. (uncommondescent.com)
  • The origin and early evolution of chordates: molecular clocks and the fossil record. (palass.org)
  • In The Origin , you gave very little evidence for evolution from the fossil record, wringing your hands instead about the incompleteness of the geological record. (newrepublic.com)
  • The fossil record has given us a direct glimpse of an event of great moment in the history of the planet: the colonization of land by vertebrates. (newrepublic.com)
  • Similarities in amino acid sequences between various organisms also suggest common descent, and the fossil record also shows cases in which one plant or animal type evolved into different types over time. (rationalwiki.org)
  • The specimen pushes back the fossil record for vampyropods by some 82 million years. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • It is a so-called "living fossil," because it has survived virtually unchanged since first appearing in the fossil record 100 million years ago. (ex-christian.net)
  • Syllipsimopodi bideni is small (about 12cm in length), has ten arms, suckers, fins, and a triangular pen of hard tissue inside its body for support. (bigthink.com)
  • The fossilized creature is about 12cm long with its 10 arms showing suckers and fins and a long "torpedo-shaped" body similar to modern squids. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • These include fossils that show transitions between mammals and reptiles, fish and amphibians, and even dinosaurs with feathers-the ancestors of birds! (newrepublic.com)
  • But genetic material cannot be extracted from fossils that may be hundreds of millions of years old, so the full story of their evolution has remained unresolved. (bigthink.com)
  • Beyond what this fossil can tell us about cephalopod evolution, the authors also investigated the animal's ecology. (bigthink.com)
  • A newly discovered fossil is changing ideas about the evolution of the dolphin-like ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs on land, and shows how quickly life rebounded from a catastrophic mass extinction 250 million years ago. (ucdavis.edu)
  • This discovery is one more data point that might help us answer some questions and perhaps shed some light on the fin to limb transition, which is a key step in the evolution of land animals," said Caldwell. (phys.org)
  • Farish Jenkins, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University said: "This represents a critical early phase in the evolution of all limbed animals, including humans - albeit a very ancient step. (uncommondescent.com)
  • This newly discovered fossil shows an animal, Sclerocormus parviceps, that appeared in the oceans almost 250 million years ago after a catastrophe that wiped out almost all marine life. (ucdavis.edu)
  • Back then, early fish used their fanlike tails as fins to swim through oceans and escape predators. (techbords.com)
  • We knew that the rocks on Ellesmere Island offered a glimpse into the right time period and were formed in the right kinds of environments to provide the potential for finding fossils documenting this important evolutionary transition. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Although they may have ventured into the water, they were terrestrial , or land-dwelling, animals. (howstuffworks.com)
  • For [Ted] Daeschler, who is based at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the big question was: how did terrestrial animals evolve from fish? (scienceagainstevolution.org)
  • And in the last thirty years we have discovered a whole series of intermediate fossils spanning the gap from those ancient deer to modern whales, showing them losing their hind legs, evolving flippers, and moving their breathing hole to the top of their head. (newrepublic.com)
  • And because whales and birds descended from creatures with fingers and toes â€" hoofed mammals and dinosaurs, respectively â€" their flippers and wings are also evolutionarily linked to fish fins, she added. (ex-christian.net)
  • This degree of variation makes it very difficult to understand the pattern of evolutionary limb loss in these animals. (phys.org)
  • The delicate rays and spines of a fish's fins form a second, no less important "dermal" skeleton, which was also undergoing evolutionary changes in this period. (futurity.org)
  • Apposing joint surfaces of the left pectoral fin of NUFV 109 in articular view. (nature.com)
  • A digital reconstruction of the pectoral fin of the Qikiqtania wakei fossil. (nhpr.org)
  • A gene responsible for the development of fins in a primitive fish also helped shape the hands, feet and wings of every land animal alive today. (ex-christian.net)
  • It's a unique find because "squishy" animals tend to degrade quickly after death and therefore rarely make good fossils. (bigthink.com)
  • The internal skeleton including the braincase, vertebral column and fin supports were cartilaginous and thus are rarely preserved. (cincymuseum.org)
  • The fossils rarely exhibited any traces of the soft tissues of fish. (newworldencyclopedia.org)
  • Many insects also have tails, but they evolved separately from other animals with backbones, like fish and mammals. (techbords.com)
  • A 180-million-year-old fossil discovered more than 20 years ago in Hungary's Gerecse Mountains was recently identified as a new species of ancient marine crocodile. (weather.com)
  • Ancient Creatures: Fin Whales have been around for millions of years, with fossil evidence indicating their presence as far back as 20 million years ago. (danawharf.com)
  • Fossils from Gona and elsewhere suggest that the ancient hominid walked on two feet and had diamond-shaped upper canines, not the "v"-shaped ones chimps use to chomp. (sciencedaily.com)
  • The fin had a kind of palm that could lie flush against the muddy bottoms of rivers and streams," Shubin says. (futurity.org)
  • Most of the major joints of the fin are functional in this fish," Professor Shubin said. (uncommondescent.com)
  • Dr Clack said that, judging from the fossil, the first evolutionary transition from sea to land probably involved learning how to breathe air. (uncommondescent.com)
  • But since then, the labors of fossil-hunters throughout the world have turned up plenty of evidence of evolutionary change, and many amazing "transitional" forms that connect major groups of animals, proving your idea of common ancestry. (newrepublic.com)
  • Aquatic animals get significant thrust by moving fins back and forth in water. (wikipedia.org)
  • Often the tail fin is used, but some aquatic animals generate thrust from pectoral fins. (wikipedia.org)
  • Sauripterus and Eusthenopteron were believed to have been fully aquatic and used their pectoral fins for swimming, although they may have been able to prop themselves up on the bottom of lakes and streams. (futurity.org)
  • A University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal, a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limbloss in lizards but the first example of limbloss in an aquatic lizard. (phys.org)
  • The find is the first complete evidence of an animal that was on the verge of the transition from water to land. (uncommondescent.com)
  • The shoulder, elbow and even parts of the wrist are already there and working in ways similar to the earliest land-living animals. (uncommondescent.com)
  • A few windows are now opening in Africa to glance into the fossil evidence on the earliest hominids," said IUB paleoanthropologist Sileshi Semaw, who led the research. (sciencedaily.com)
  • It's long been thought that there were 10 arms ancestrally in vampyropods, but that has never been demonstrated with hard evidence until this fossil discovery," Whalen said. (ualrpublicradio.org)
  • Sordino, P., Hoeven, F. V. D. & Duboule, D. Hox gene expression in teleost fins and the origin of vertebrate digits. (nature.com)
  • He says the newly discovered fossil has a totally different fin from its relative. (wypr.org)
  • As they swim, they use other fins, such as dorsal and anal fins, to achieve stability and refine their maneuvering. (wikipedia.org)
  • dorsal fin and well-defined beak present or absent. (britannica.com)
  • A CT scan of Tiktaalik's fin skeleton, showing its dorsal rays (yellow) and ventral rays (cyan). (futurity.org)
  • Tiktaalik's dorsal rays were several times larger than its ventral rays, suggesting that it had muscles that extended on the underside of its fins, like the fleshy base of the palm, to help support its weight. (futurity.org)
  • Because Sclerocormus appears just a few million years (very soon, in geological terms) after the end of the Permian period, and is clearly so different from other fossils of the time, it shows there must have been far more diversity among marine reptiles at the beginning of the Triassic period than had been thought, Motani said. (ucdavis.edu)
  • The last theory is the fins were a bright color, similar to modern-day reptiles or amphibians . (a-z-animals.com)
  • It seemed to be doing some novel things with its fins and the nature of its skeleton, particularly in the neck. (thetriangle.org)
  • These jaws of bone sliced against one another like the blades of a scissors, maintaining a sharp edge, while the "tusks" at the front gave the animal the appearance of a monstrous staple remover! (cincymuseum.org)
  • After the material is collected from the site, it is taken to a preparation lab where the rock is slowly chipped away from the bone to remove the embedded fossil. (thetriangle.org)
  • All we have are bone and egg fossils, collections of footprints called trackways , and our knowledge of living animals. (howstuffworks.com)
  • Foil shaped fins generate thrust when moved, the lift of the fin sets water or air in motion and pushes the fin in the opposite direction. (wikipedia.org)
  • Development of the median fins of the North American paddlefish ( Polyodon spathula ), and a reevaluation of the lateral fin-fold hypothesis. (palass.org)
  • Earlier in 2022 Gregory, the University of Hamburg's Helena Herr and colleagues published a study in the journal Scientific Reports documenting a feeding pod of some 150 fin whales in 2019. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • Lengthy Lifespan: Fin Whales can live up to 80 to 90 years, similar to other large baleen whales. (danawharf.com)
  • This fossil provides a unique insight into how crocodiles began evolving into dolphin and killer whale-like forms more than 180 million years ago ," Mark Young, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh and study co-author, said in a press release. (weather.com)
  • We now have more than 30 fossils from at least nine individuals dated between 4.3 and 4.5 million years old," said Semaw, Gona Palaeoanthropological Research Project director and Stone Age Institute research scientist. (sciencedaily.com)
  • Last month (December 2004), Semaw coauthored a paper in Geological Society of America Bulletin summarizing Gona's geological properties and the site's cornucopia of hominid fossils spanning several million years. (sciencedaily.com)
  • His research has long focused on trilobites , a fossil group of extinct arthropods (joint legged animals) that were around for at least 250 million years. (we-make-money-not-art.com)
  • Dinosaurs were a group of land animals that lived from about 230 million years ago until about 60 million years ago. (howstuffworks.com)
  • This would, however, be in line with evidence from fossils of land animals and plants, which show rapid diversification following the mass extinction. (ucdavis.edu)
  • Direct evidence of this activity is preserved in two fossils in the collection at Cincinnati Museum Center. (cincymuseum.org)
  • Although studies in animal development have revived interest in this idea11-13, it is apparently unsupported by fossil evidence. (bvsalud.org)
  • Fins can regulate temperature In biology, fins can have an adaptive significance as sexual ornaments. (wikipedia.org)
  • The fossils were retrieved from the Gona Study Area in northern Ethiopia, only one of two sites to yield fossil remains of Ardipithecus ramidus. (sciencedaily.com)
  • To find where the fin whales might be feeding, Hickmott first scouted for areas where deep ocean currents slammed against the steep walls of the continental shelf. (nationalgeographic.com)
  • The homologies that are perhaps not evident by morphology-just comparing a hand and a fin-can be traced back to the genome, where you find that the regulatory regions that control the making of those structures are actually present and shared between these organisms. (answersingenesis.org)
  • We can find them as fossils but they are very rare and the ones we find from 2.5 billion years ago look very much like these stromatolites. (we-make-money-not-art.com)
  • Find your favorite Animals! (a-z-animals.com)
  • We don't know when this unusual fossil was discovered, but in 1988 it was donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. (bigthink.com)
  • The fossils are] helping us paint a better picture about the diversity of life," Daeschler said. (thetriangle.org)
  • Stewart and his colleagues also compared the dermal skeletons of living fish like sturgeon and lungfish to understand the patterns they were seeing in the fossils. (futurity.org)
  • Different populations of fin whales have unique migration patterns and breeding grounds, which makes assessing their total numbers a complex task. (danawharf.com)
  • Why do animals have tails? (techbords.com)
  • Modern animals use their tails for everything from balance to communication and finding mates. (techbords.com)
  • Cats and other animals that climb often have bushy or long tails that help them balance, kind of like a tightrope walker holding a long pole. (techbords.com)
  • These tails are so strong that they can even hold the animal up while it eats fruit and leaves. (techbords.com)
  • Other animals' tails evolved into weapons. (techbords.com)
  • In some animals, like wasps, their tails can do both, as certain parasitic wasps will lay their eggs inside a host. (techbords.com)
  • Grazing animals, like North American bison and the wildebeest and giraffe in Africa, have tails with bunches of long hairs that can be waved as a whisk to swat off mosquitoes and other insects that may be bothering them. (techbords.com)
  • Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. (wikipedia.org)
  • Fins can also generate thrust if they are rotated in air or water. (wikipedia.org)
  • Qikiqtania's fins are the result of its swimming ancestors crawling onto land, then returning to the water. (nhpr.org)
  • Shaped like a torpedo, the creature probably used jet-propulsion to move through the water (like many living cephalopods), and the rounded fins on either side of its body for stability. (bigthink.com)
  • Animals went from swimming freely and using their fins to control the flow of water around them, to becoming adapted to pushing off against the surface at the bottom of the water. (futurity.org)
  • Nickname: Fin Whales are often called the "greyhounds of the sea" due to their sleek and streamlined body shape, allowing them to swim swiftly through the water. (danawharf.com)
  • Fin whales are efficient predators, capable of engulfing large volumes of water containing their prey during each feeding lunge. (danawharf.com)
  • It has the flat head and neck of an amphibian, but a fishy tail and body, while its fins are sturdy, easily able, with slight modification, to give them a leg up when they left the water. (newrepublic.com)
  • The strata of prehistoric limestone that was once beneath the sea are clearly visible as you make your way around the large water filled room and at every turn more fossils are revealed. (floridadiveconnection.com)
  • The trunk has a pair of fins which help the animal move about in the water. (wikiversity.org)
  • The Australian lungfish is the only living member of a group of fish called lobe-fins, which is considered the closest living relatives of land animals. (ex-christian.net)
  • Instead, the ancestral whale came from a small hooved animal rather like a deer. (newrepublic.com)
  • The latter proposes that fins and girdles evolved from an ancestral gill arch. (bvsalud.org)
  • The results show hitherto undiscovered elements that constitute rudiments of fingers in the fins. (expertsvar.se)
  • Professor John Long, of Flinders University in Adelaide, said: ''This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish. (femalefirst.co.uk)
  • Nevertheless, they cannot swim faster because the cavitation bubbles create a vapor film around their fins that limits their speed. (wikipedia.org)