What is Tiktaalik?
Q: What is Tiktaalik?
A: Tiktaalik is an extinct fish genus that lived about 375 million years ago.
Q: What type of fish is Tiktaalik?
A: Tiktaalik is a sarcopterygian, or lobe-finned, fish.
Q: What is significant about Tiktaalik?
A: Tiktaalik has many features similar to those of tetrapods and is part of the transition between fish and early tetrapods.
Q: When did Panderichthys live?
A: Panderichthys is known from fossils 380 million years old.
Q: When did Acanthostega and Ichthyostega live?
A: Acanthostega and Ichthyostega are known from fossils about 365 million years old.
Q: What is the term used to describe Tiktaalik's mixture of fish and tetrapod characteristics?
A: Tiktaalik's mixture of features is so unique that one of its discoverers, Neil Shubin, called it a "fishapod."
Q: What does Tiktaalik prove about the development of legs?
A: Tiktaalik and other species like it prove that legs started to develop in shallow-water carnivorous fish before these animals were land-based.
