|
|
Missing Link, The
|
|
|
|
Program Overview
|
|
|
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.
|
|
