Digital evolution: early fish had primitive fingers, says study

DonShula84 · Sep 22, 2008

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have traced the origin of fingers and toes to fish-like creatures that roamed the seas 380 million years ago, according to a new study.

The findings, published Sunday in the British-based science journal Nature, upend the prevailing theory on the evolution of digits.

It had long been assumed that the first creatures to develop primitive fingers were tetrapods, air-breathing animals that crawled from sea to land some 10 to 20 million years later.

The need to adapt to swampy marshlands and terra firma, the theory went, is what drove the gradual shift through natural selection from fish fins suitable only for swimming to weight-bearing limbs with articulated joints.

The study, however, reveals that rudimentary fingers were already present inside the fins of the shallow-water, meter-long (three-foot long) Panderichthys, a transitional species that was nonetheless more fish than tetrapod.

"What we have shown is that the hand and the foot emerge from pre-existing bits of the fin skeleton that were just reshaped, rather than being entirely new bits that were bolted onto the existing fin skeleton," said co-author Per Ahlberg, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.
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Digital evolution: early fish had primitive fingers, says study - Yahoo! News

Crappy Tipper · Sep 22, 2008

What determines the difference between long grasping toes and fingers? Is the term "fingers" used mainly to stir up the fun old evolution we-are-related-to-pond-scum-debate?

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Digital evolution: early fish had primitive fingers, says study

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