Today it is believed that the release of the first fish on dry land, and transformation fins into limbs for movement took place 370-375 million years ago, and the first amphibians appeared 20-30 million after this point. But all notions of evolution, according to the journal Nature, may change with the opening of scientists from the University of calgary, Canada. They found that the first inhabitants of the land were like a cross between snakes and fish, and the discovery was made almost by accident.
The difficulty in studying the process of formation of the first inhabitants of the land lies in the fact that the completion of the process of evolution of the period, almost nothing is known. The time in evolutionary terms for paleontologists is a white spot, it also is called “the failure of the Romer”. The remains of the first animals of that period are practically preserved in terrestrial rocks. In science there are only a few examples of creatures of that era.
A group of scientists under the leadership of Jason Anderson studied the remains of ancient amphibians Lethiscus Stocki, which belonged to aistopoda – amphibians that are similar in their structure and way of life on the sea serpent that lived in the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Lethiscus Stocki have no limbs, and they moved on land and in water, curving body. A team of scientists, to educate the remains of Lethiscus Stocki by means of a computer tomograph, reconstructed on the computer three-dimensional form of the skull of this ancient creature.
In the end it turned out that the skeletal system of these amphibians are not similar to those of their closest relatives. Comparing the model with the found remains of pederpes (Pederpes Finneyae) and Tiktaalik (Tiktaalik Roseae) scientists came to the conclusion that Lethiscus Stocki is the “missing link” in the evolution of land animals. According to Jason Anderson,
“This discovery forces us to radically rethink what they can achieve evolution in the development of early four-legged creatures. We used to think that the transformation of fins into limbs has been very gradual and slow. Our finding shows that this change was dramatic and almost instantaneous, and some early tetrapods lost their legs almost immediately after their acquisition”.
Based on materials of RIA “news”
Found the missing link in evolution between fish and amphibians
Vladimir Kuznetsov