From “New Theory Emerges for Where Some Fish Became Four-Limbed Creatures” (ScienceDaily, Dec. 27, 2011), we learn,
A small fish crawling on stumpy limbs from a shrinking desert pond is an icon of can-do spirit, emblematic of a leading theory for the evolutionary transition between fish and amphibians. This theorized image of such a drastic adaptation to changing environmental conditions, however, may, itself, be evolving into a new picture.
“These transitional fossils were not associated with drying ponds or deserts, but consistently were found with humid woodland soils,” he said. “Remains of drying ponds and desert soils also are known and are littered with fossil fish, but none of our distant ancestors. Judging from where their fossils were found, transitional forms between fish and amphibians lived in wooded floodplains. Our distant ancestors were not so much foolhardy, as opportunistic, taking advantage of floodplains and lakes choked with roots and logs for the first time in geological history.”
Limbs proved handy for negotiating woody obstacles, and flexible necks allowed for feeding in shallow water, Retallack said. By this new woodland hypothesis, the limbs and necks, which distinguish salamanders from fish, did not arise from reckless adventure in deserts, but rather were nurtured by a newly evolved habitat of humid, wooded floodplains.
The findings, he said, dampen both the desert hypothesis of Romer and a newer inter-tidal theory put forth by Grzegorz Niedbwiedzki and colleagues at the University of Warsaw. In 2010, they published their discovery of eight-foot-long, 395-million-year-old tetrapods in ancient lagoonal mud in southeastern Poland, where Retallack also has been studying fossil soils with Polish colleague Marek Narkeiwicz.
A key difficulty with water-to-land tetrapod evolution is that there is no shortage of ideas of why and how it would be convenient and/or possible for a fish-like creature to move around on land. It’s the final separation from water – one amphibians rarely managed – that involved considerable reengineering.
See also: Were early tetrapod tracks produced by walking fish?
And
Land-based fish helps researchers assess how animals moved to land – and
stayed there
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