A FISHY four-legged fossil has been found that may shed light on how animals first crawled onto land.
Palaeontologists have spent years searching for an animal that would bridge the critical evolutionary gap, from 335 million to 365 million years ago, when aquatic animals first made it out of the water. The new creature is the first intact skeleton from this time. Resembling an ungainly crocodile with a whip-like tail, it’s a metre long with a fish’s sensory apparatus, but limbs and feet adapted for solid ground (Nature vol 418, p 72).
