Tiktaalik Roseae: A 375-Million-Year-Old Fish Had Fins For Walking

MessageToEagle.com – Tiktaalik Roseae was a 375-million-year-old crocodile-like fish that could grow up to nine feet in length and hunted in shallow freshwater environments. What is extraordinary about this animal is that the fish had fins for walking. Tiktaalik Roseae, better known as the “fishapod it is the best representation of transitional species between fish and land-dwelling tetrapods.

Tiktaalik means “large, freshwater fish” in the language of the Nunavut people, who live in the region near its discovery site on Canada’s frigid Ellesmere Island.

Tiktaalik Roseae lived in marshy river settings resembling today’s Amazon.

A series of discoveries, including Tiktaalik and similar creatures over the past decade, are giving scholars opportunity to learn when animals, other than insects first made the leap to land.

Why fish made the move to land 395 million years ago remains a bit of a mystery. It was very long time ago the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana was drifting toward the proto-North American continent.

See also: Pristimantis Mutabilis: Shape-Shifting Frog In The Ecuadorian Cloud Forest

During this drift created many shallow-water habitats, hence perfect places for something crocodile-like to thrive. These environments were also at the equator at that time, so it is nice and warm and tropical.

The problem was food. But there was not much to eat on land at the time for Tiktaalik, aside from spiders, scorpions, insects, and a few plants. Fewer predators or a safer place to lay eggs may have instead driven land creatures to evolve, some suggest.

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