Young Students Recognize a Transitional Fossil
Topic
Duration
00:04:44Description
This video shows the reactions of first-grade students to a replica of a Tiktaalik fossil.
Paleontologist Neil Shubin brought the fossil to his daughter’s first-grade class to see what the students would make of it. The students immediately recognized that Tiktaalik, an organism that existed about 375 million years ago, has characteristics of both a fish and a four-legged land animal (tetrapod).
This short video, inspired by Neil Shubin’s book Your Inner Fish, illustrates the power of fossil evidence for learning about evolution.
Key Terms
fish, fishapod, limb, paleontology, scales, skeleton, skull, tetrapod
Primary Literature
Daeschler, Edward B., Neil H. Shubin, and Farish A. Jenkins Jr. “A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan.” Nature 440, 7085 (2006): 757–763. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04639.
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