Missing link between fish and tetrapods found

Palaeontologists have found the missing link between fish and four-footed land animals (tetrapods) in the remote Arctic. It has long been thought that our fish ancestors began walking on land some 400 million years ago. Now they have the prove. From New Scientist:

The new animal has been named Tiktaalik after suggestions from Inuit elders in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut, where the fossil was found. The name means "large freshwater fish", and before long could be as well known as that of another iconic transition fossil, the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx.

"We describe this as a 'fishopod': part fish, part tetrapod," says Neil Shubin, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, and a member of the team that discovered Tiktaalik.