Tiktaalik
Tiktaalik roseae
Tiktaalik documents a transition in body structure between fish and early tetrapods, without itself being a land animal.
Image: Eduard Solà · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Tiktaalik roseae
- Period
- Late Devonian
- Lived
- 375–372 Ma (375 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Freshwater, Swamp
- Length (estimate)
- 2.5 m
Description
Tiktaalik combined scales and fin rays with a broad, flattened head, a movable neck and ribs. Strong bones in its pectoral fins could probably support its body in shallow water, but were not true fingers. It had lung-like breathing capacity as well as gills and lived in warm, oxygen-poor waterways. There is no direct proof that it regularly came onto land.
Habitat
Shallow rivers and swampy waterways on a polar continent.
Fossil sites
Ellesmere Island, Nunavut
Fram Formation
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Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Tiktaalik