<<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=5074 91>>
Revealed: How the fish got its fingers By Steve Connor, Science Editor 02 April 2004
A two-lane highway in America has helped scientists to explain one of life's most enduring mysteries: how fish grew the fingers that enabled them to crawl out on to land.
The road in Pennsylvania happened to be cut out of 365 million-year-old rock in which the researchers found the oldest known fossilised arm bone of one of the world's first four-legged creatures, or tetrapods.
Dr Coates and his colleagues Neil Shubin and Edward Daeschler believe the fossilised bone found in Pennsylvania helped the forelimb fulfil an intermediate function between the braking and steering of a fish's fin and the walking movements of an early amphibian.
Drs Daeschler and Shubin found the fossil in 1993 when they were excavating near the highway but it took nearly eight years to discover it was important.
The same palaeontology site in Pennsylvania has yielded two other types of tetrapod living in the Devonian period, Dr Clack said. "If this is really a third form, it hints at a wide diversity of tetrapods existing in close proximity, in what is emerging as one of the richest and most varied of any late Devonian vertebrate site," she added.
The scientists who have excavated the Pennsylvania site said it contains fossils of other plants and animals that suggest the area was "teeming" with life more than 360 million years ago.
This highway goes right through my hometown; the cut is five miles to the east. My grandfather worked on the first cut; many other friends and family worked on the second cut to widen the road in the early 70s. This road has many cuts like this. Some made in the 30s, others redone a few years ago. If there's a nice snowfall the road can get shut for days from slides; not rock slides but the snow getting funneled through a cut.
The article doesn't say it, but the original person who started looking here is just an amateur; not that it detracts from the finds. Now some weekends there can be 20 or more people working.
I've posted about this before. They have their own website. Look at the picture and think that it's in PA, not Utah. It can get very hot during the summer.
http://www.mdgekko.com/devonian/who/pages/who.html
Kevin T. - VRWLC
60 hours from now I'll be driving past it
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