Vision Helped Ancestral Fish Adapt to Life on Land

“Buena vista” hypothesis suggests that changes in the sizes of eyes, rather than a shift from fins to limbs, led fish to transition to land more than 300 million years ago.

Written byDiana Kwon

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A 3-D model of a fishapod, the Tiktaalik MALCOLM MACIVER, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

During the Devonian period, around 385 million years ago, our aquatic ancestors evolved to live on land. While most scientists suspect this transition was spurred by the evolution of fins to limbs, it may have been changes in the eyes that brought the early fish out of the water, according to a study published Tuesday (March 7) in PNAS.

Malcolm MacIver, a neuroscientist and engineer at Northwestern University, and colleagues made this discovery while investigating the fossilized skulls of 59 fish, tetrapod, and fishapod (intermediates between fish and tetrapod) species from the Devonian period. By measuring eye socket size, they discovered that these ancient creatures’ eyes may have nearly tripled in size before the transition from water to land occurred. Bigger eyes would had made ...

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Meet the Author

Diana Kwon
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Diana is a freelance science journalist who covers the life sciences, health, and academic life. She’s a regular contributor to The Scientist and her work has appeared in several other publications, including Scientific American, Knowable, and Quanta. Diana was a former intern at The Scientist and she holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from McGill University. She’s currently based in Berlin, Germany.
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