Fossilized Fish Fin Sheds Light on How Appendages May Have Evolved
From Times staff and wire reports
Although many evolutionary biologists believe that animals developed limbs and fingers after they passed from oceans to dry land, new fossils found in a pile of boulders lying along a busy highway in Pennsylvania suggest that at least some vertebrates developed appendages while still in the ocean.
Paleontologist Edward B. Daeschler of the University of Pennsylvania reports in today’s Nature that a boulder contained a 370-million-year-old fossil fish fin. The fin “is so limb-like that we’re tempted to call it a fish with fingers,” he said. The fins could have been used to help the fish swim, he added.
