Our Hands Originated In Earth's Oceans At Least 380 Million Years Ago

Newsweek ✈ Scientists have discovered a 380-million-year-old fossil in eastern Canada which sheds new light on the transition between fish and the first four-legged animals that made their way onto land, and the origins of the vertebrate hand.

Aristos Georgiou

The researchers discovered the most complete specimen to date of an animal known as Elpistostege watsoni — which is thought to be a midway point between fish and land vertebrates — according to a study published in the journal Nature.

John Long, an author of the study from Flinders University in Australia, told Newsweek.

Elpistsostege is a kind of ancient lobe-finned fish that lived 380 million years ago, which our paper reveals is closer to the first amphibians — part of a group of four-limbed vertebrates known as tetrapods— than any other known fish, alive or extinct ... These fishes—called elpistostegalians—are the ones that gave rise to the first tetrapods, so share many advanced features with early tetrapods. We found it has a front fin (pectoral fin) equivalent to the arm in land animals, that shows the presence of rows of digit bones—the same bones in the fingers of your hand.

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