For homework, we had to read chapters 1,2, and 11 in Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish. The chapters talk about his discovery of the transitional fossil called Tiktaalik.
Then we took a quiz on this stuff.
Tiktaalik is important because it not only has gils and webbed feet like a fish, he has limbs, a flat head, and a rotating neck, like a land animal (amphibian). The discovery of Tiktaalik was about serendipity and careful planning. To find your specific fossil, you need right time period or age of the rock, sedimentary rock, and exposer.
We also learned about homologous structures. This means that the structure of the bones is similar, but the function and purpose is different. Also, it shows us that the animals with the homologous structures share a common ancestor.
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