But why live in these environments at all? What possessed fish to get out of the water or live in the margins? Think of this: virtually every fish swimming in these 375-million-year-old streams was a predator of some kind. Some were up to sixteen feet long, almost twice the size of the largest Tiktaalik. The most common fish species we find alongside Tiktaalik is seven feet long and has a head as wide as a basketball. The teeth are barbs the size of railroad spikes. Would you want to swim in these ancient streams?
It is no exaggeration to say that this was a fish-eat-fish world. The strategies to succeed in this setting were pretty obvious: get big, get armor, or get out of the water. It looks as if our distant ancestors avoided the fight.
But this conflict avoidance meant something much deeper to us. We can trace many of the structures of our own limbs to the fins of these fish. Bend your wrist back and forth. Open and close your hand. When you do this, you are using joints that first appeared in the fins of fish like Tiktaalik.
Posted by Caine
