Not elder law: Missing Link Discovered!

Say hello to our most bizarre ancestor — a part crocodile, partseal-like fish that was able to take the first baby steps on to landroughly 380 million years ago.The discovery, 1,400 kilometres above the Arctic Circle, of fossilized skeletons of a creature dubbed Tiktaalik roseae is seen as filling a missing evolutionary link between fish and the first land animals.The findings were announced yesterday by a U.S.-Canada team that included a University of Toronto graduate researcher.SteveCumbaa, a research paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature inOttawa not connected with the work, hailed the discovery.

“Theseare the first little baby steps on getting animals `out of ooze andborn to cruise,'” Cumbaa said, quoting a catchphrase by Americancartoonist Ray Troll.Experts say that within a few million years Tiktaalikwas followed by creatures completely adapted to terrestrial life,collectively called tetrapods. These then evolved into all the landanimals on Earth today, including humans.

Read more about the find in the Toronto Star.