Artistic reconstruction of Tiktaalik roseaeWIKIMEDIA, NOBU TAMURA
Around 400 million years ago, a sea creature—most likely a lobe-finned fish such as Tiktaalik—took the first, tentative steps on dry land. This transition led to the rise of all terrestrial tetrapods, but it remains unclear what evolutionary pressures initially drove them to clamber ashore. This week (February 15), researchers at the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon, reported new evidence for the hypothesis that strong ocean tides may have had a significant role in the transition.
The idea that tide pools may have been a waystation in the evolution from sea to land has been generally accepted since it was first proposed by the American paleontologist Alfred Romer in the 1950s. But what the researchers test in the new study “is the actual ...
