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A Big Step for a Fish – The Evolution of Four-Legged Land Animals

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology via YouTube

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This lecture examines how vertebrates evolved from aquatic fish into four-legged land animals. It combines fossil discoveries, geological context, anatomy, and competing interpretations of early tetrapod evolution.

Syllabus

A big step for a fish - the evolution of four-legged land animals
1 What are vertebrates?
1 How do vertebrate numbers compare to other organisms?
Tetrapods were not the first on land
Where have early tetrapod and near-tetrapods fossils been found?
Old idea: tetrapods evolved when fish crawled out of drying ponds to find new ponds
Latimeria chalumnae - a living coelacanth
Tiktaalik roseae (2008)
Ichthyostega (East Greenland, 365 million years) hind limb
Middle Devonian tracks, Poland
An alternative view to current dogma: Ichthyostega and Acanthostega are secondarily aquatic tetrapods
When is a fish not a fish?

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Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

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