• Question: From what form of marine organism did humans evolve from?

    Asked by supercalifishagelisticexpialidocious to Dave, Glo, Sean on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Wow, this was so far back in the evolutionary chain, that I doubt it’ really possible to know. I suspect that the furthest back it would be possible to trace it would be to the fish that made those first tentative steps onto land – possibly th lungfish or something similar.

    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Hmmmm, I’m not sure! I don’t think that anyone has ever identified the exact lineage of fish that would have made those first steps. Like Dave says, the Lungfish is a candidate as is the Coelacanth or ‘Living Fossil’. The Coelacanth is a very strange looking fish with 4 separate fins on its underside that, when they were re-discovered in the 1950s (many people thought they had been extinct for millions of years until they turned up in a Fisherman’s net) a lot of people thought that they walked along the seabed and thus were related to land animals in some way and thus could have been the link between the ocean and us! Unfortunately, DNA evidence rules this out so, as far as I am aware, the search goes on…

      Ugly fella, isn’t he?

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