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Missing Link, The
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Program Overview
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NOVA follows paleontologists as they search for evidence of how humans evolved legs.
The program:
surveys 70 years of the search
for the first Devonian tetrapod
and the fish with legs from
which it came.
follows one scientist's 1930s
discovery of a Greenland fossil that he concluded was the first tetrapod and his unwillingness
to let anyone else study it for
48 years.
tells of the 1938 finding of a
coelocanth and the subsequent reinterpretation of its role as a transitional form.
chronicles the discovery of another Greenland tetrapod fossil that was found to have eight digits, not five as expected.
explains the findings of two more tetrapods within Pennsylvania sandstone that indicated the
end of the Devonian Period was characterized by a diverse
environment, not a barren one
as previously believed.
discusses the process of natural selection whereby limbs evolved, an adaptation that facilitated movement through shallow wetlands.
shows the serendipitous nature
of several key discoveries,
including the rediscovery of a
previously catalogued fish jaw that exhibited part fish and part tetrapod features.
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