http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/07/03/early.walker.ap/index.html
Fossil identified as earliest land walker
AP) -- A fossil found in 1971 has been newly identified as the earliest known animal built to walk on land, a salamanderlike creature that marked a previously unknown stage in the evolution of fish into the ancestors of all vertebrates alive today.
The toothy animal, Pederpes finneyae, lived between 348 million and 344 million years ago in what is now Scotland. It was perhaps a yard long, and probably split its time between the water and land where it walked on four feet, said Jenny Clack, of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.
"It trudged through the swamp catching anything that moved -- not terribly exciting, I suppose," Clack said.
Clack formally describes Pederpes in this week's journal Nature. The creature's nearly complete fossil skeleton had lain, mislabeled as a fish, in a Scottish museum since its discovery 31 years ago. Further work on the fossil in the 1990s revealed it had legs.
The identification helps close a hole in the early fossil record of a group of creatures called tetrapods.
The gap, or Romer's Gap -- named for the late Harvard paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer -- had stumped scientists seeking to chart the evolution of the first four-limbed creatures with backbones. Tetrapods were the first animals known to walk the Earth and are the ancestors of today's mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.
"Discovery of a nearly complete skeleton in the middle of Romer's Gap should help in establishing the pattern of evolutionary change among early tetrapods," wrote Robert Carroll, of Montreal's Redpath Museum, in an accompanying commentary.
Fossil identified as earliest land walker
AP) -- A fossil found in 1971 has been newly identified as the earliest known animal built to walk on land, a salamanderlike creature that marked a previously unknown stage in the evolution of fish into the ancestors of all vertebrates alive today.
The toothy animal, Pederpes finneyae, lived between 348 million and 344 million years ago in what is now Scotland. It was perhaps a yard long, and probably split its time between the water and land where it walked on four feet, said Jenny Clack, of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.
"It trudged through the swamp catching anything that moved -- not terribly exciting, I suppose," Clack said.
Clack formally describes Pederpes in this week's journal Nature. The creature's nearly complete fossil skeleton had lain, mislabeled as a fish, in a Scottish museum since its discovery 31 years ago. Further work on the fossil in the 1990s revealed it had legs.
The identification helps close a hole in the early fossil record of a group of creatures called tetrapods.
The gap, or Romer's Gap -- named for the late Harvard paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer -- had stumped scientists seeking to chart the evolution of the first four-limbed creatures with backbones. Tetrapods were the first animals known to walk the Earth and are the ancestors of today's mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.
"Discovery of a nearly complete skeleton in the middle of Romer's Gap should help in establishing the pattern of evolutionary change among early tetrapods," wrote Robert Carroll, of Montreal's Redpath Museum, in an accompanying commentary.
