Australian Fish Stretching Their Legs

Erik Vance

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001167

Abstract

Australian Fish Stretching Their Legs

Highlights

Anyone who has even the dimmest conception of evolution has seen the iconic image of a trail of creatures crawling out of the ocean, growing hair, gradually standing erect, and eventually becoming Man
Since the earliest days of evolutionary theory, scientists have longed to understand just how that process occurred and what the intermediate steps looked like. They have compiled a detailed picture of the process of how the bones evolved to support the animal’s weight on land, but very little is known about the other half of the story— how the muscles adapted and changed
Over an exhausting 6 years, a team led by Peter Currie at Monash University and Nicolas Cole at the University of Sydney created a detailed picture of how the muscles in the pelvic bones of fish evolved in order to prepare them to crawl onto land

Summary

Introduction

Anyone who has even the dimmest conception of evolution has seen the iconic image of a trail of creatures crawling out of the ocean, growing hair, gradually standing erect, and eventually becoming Man. They have compiled a detailed picture of the process of how the bones evolved to support the animal’s weight on land, but very little is known about the other half of the story— how the muscles adapted and changed.

Results

Conclusion