Discovery Points to Our Fishy Heritage

Jeanna Bryner
Live Science Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
1 hour, 38 minutes ago

A primitive fish that swam in tropical reef systems before life clambered up on land had more advanced features than previously thought, a new study finds.

Scientists led by John Long of the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, discovered the first complete fossil of a Gogonasus fish last year in a limestone formation in Western Australia. Prior to the new discovery, only parts of Gogonasus, including a snout and part of a skull, had been found.

The newly discovered fossil "has all these remarkable details preserved that none of the other specimens could show," Long said.

The specimen, whose middle ear and limbs resemble those of land vertebrates, could be one of the missing links between fish and four-legged land vertebrates, bringing researchers closer to the point when life reached the water's edge.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20061018/sc_space/discoverypointstoourfishyheritage

why should 'WE' bother with real science and fact??

Instead of one gap between sea and land, there are now TWO gaps. Proof of God's creation!

A primitive fish that swam in tropical reef systems before life clambered up on land had more advanced features than previously thought, a new study finds.

and
The specimen, whose middle ear and limbs resemble those of land vertebrates, could be one of the missing links between fish and four-legged land vertebrates, bringing researchers closer to the point when life reached the water's edge.

That's VERTEBRATE life. Other life forms were already there for millions of years before vertebrates joined the party.

from (in Spanish):
http://www.abc.es/20061019/sociedad-ciencia/descubierto-australia-fosil-paso_200610191020.html

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/10/fossil_fish_fills_evolutionary.php

SYDNEY (AFP)—A 380 million-year-old fossil has filled a gap in understanding how fish evolved into the first land animals, Australian scientists say.

The perfectly preserved skeleton has revealed that fish developed features characteristic of land animals much earlier than once thought, said lead researcher John Long of Australia's Museum Victoria.

"We've got a fish from the Devonian period about 380 million years ago and preserved in three-dimensional stunning perfection," Long told AFP.