Tiktaalik Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Tiktaalik Temporal range: Upper Devonian

Tiktaalik
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Sarcopterygii
Subclass:	Tetrapodomorpha
Genus:	Tiktaalik

Tiktaalik is an extinct type of fish. It lived a very long time ago. This special fish had many features that were like those of tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four legs, like frogs, lizards, and even humans!

Tiktaalik lived about 375 million years ago. It is an important transitional fossil. This means it shows how animals changed over time. It helps us understand how fish slowly developed into animals that could live on land.

Scientists believe Tiktaalik was a step between fish like Panderichthys and early four-legged animals like Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. One of the scientists who found Tiktaalik, Neil Shubin, called it a 'fishapod'. This name shows it was part fish and part tetrapod.

This amazing creature, and others like it, show that legs started to grow before animals moved onto land. Tiktaalik was a meat-eating fish that lived in shallow water. It was a perfect example of a transitional fossil. It also showed mosaic evolution, meaning it had a mix of old fish features and new tetrapod features.

Neil Shubin, one of the people who found Tiktaalik, holding a model of its skull.

In the late Devonian period, some lobe-finned fish started to change. * Eusthenopteron was a fish that lived in open water. * Panderichthys was good at living in muddy, shallow water. * Tiktaalik had fins that were like limbs. It could even move onto land for short times. * Early tetrapods lived in swampy areas with lots of plants. ** Acanthostega had feet with eight toes. ** Ichthyostega had strong limbs. Other fish, like coelacanths, also came from these lobe-finned fish.

This is where Tiktaalik fossils were found, on Ellesmere Island.

Tetrapod

Images for kids

Restoration
Skull showing small holes above the eyes, called spiracles.
The limb from the shoulder to the fin.
Tiktaalik's discoverers think it moved onto land like today's mudskippers do. Mudskippers use their fins to prop themselves up.
Restoration

Tiktaalik facts for kids

Related pages

Images for kids

See also