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Fossil fills out water-land leap

Scientists say a fossil of a four-legged fish sheds new light on the process of evolution.

The creature had a fish-like body but the head of an animal more suited to land than water.

The researchers’ study, published in the journal Nature, saysVentastega curonica would have looked similar to a small alligator.

Scientists say the 365-million-year-old species eventually became an evolutionary dead end.

Counting digits

About one hundred million years before dinosaurs began to roam the Earth, Ventastega was to be found in the shallow waters and tidal estuaries of modern day Latvia.

According to lead author, Professor Per Ahlberg, from Uppsala University, Sweden, this creature had the head of a tetrapod, an animal adapted to live on land. The body, though, was fish-like but with four primitive flippers.

“From a distance, it would have looked like an alligator. But closer up, you would have noticed a real tail fin at the back end, a gill flap at the side of the head; also lines of pores snaking across head and body.