Tiktaalik

Something to think about today, as you (perhaps) struggle with life in a cubicle, life on the freeway, life amidst a swarm of screaming toddlers, life spent silently in the basement struggling with whatever you're struggling with:



"While studying 380 million year old rocks in Ellesmere Island, at a latitude of 80 North, I was uncovering one of the key transitional stages in the shift from fish to land living animal. Everybody knows that fish swim with fins and animals that walk on land have legs. I was in the Arctic to learn how this shift happened. The fish I was uncovering had a wrist and fingers. A fish with wrists and fingers? I was immediately struck that this fossil reveals a very deep branch of my evolutionary tree. This is the origin of my wrists and fingers. Huddled in the tent during prolonged Arctic storms, it occurred to me that 3.5 billion years in the history of life are embedded in my own body."-- Neil Shubin, “The Great Transition”