Harvard researcher connects the dots in fin-to-limb evolution

Monday, May 27, 2019 - 21:08 in Paleontology & Archaeology

About 400 million years ago, vertebrates first began to crawl from the primordial seas onto land. Last week, thanks to a cutting-edge mathematical-analysis technique, a global research team uncovered how a crucial stage in evolution made that advance possible. Published May 8 in Science Advances, the paper deciphers crucial information about how those sea-dwelling creatures’ fins became the specialized limbs that made life on dry land feasible. “All animals that have limbs with hands and feet and fingers and toes [that is, tetrapods] arose from animals that were fish with fins that lived in the water,” explained Stephanie E. Pierce, associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). “One of the big puzzles is, how did that happen?” In collaboration with lead authors Borja Esteve-Altava and John Hutchinson at London’s Royal Veterinary College, Pierce and her colleagues present new research that...

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