They have found the missing link between fish and animal, or living in and out of water. The fossil was found in the Arctic and the species was an interesting variation on the move to land. Those flies were a tasty treat!
The creature had gills, a fish-like jaw and scales. But its mobile neck let it lift its head above water, and it could support its own weight on thick ribs and wrist-like bones. It may have even trudged across mudflats in the manner of early four-legged animals generally referred to as tetrapods....
If you look at joints of limbs, you can tell that the thing could perform a fish version of a push-up," Shubin told LiveScience. "It could bend its elbow and flex its wrist. It was certainly capable of supporting its body underwater, in the shallows, or in mudflats with its limbs."
The somewhat awkward animal probably didn't walk, since it likely couldn't rotate its shoulders. Instead it might have dragged itself along on land.
"It could either push itself straight up and down or pull itself forward," Shubin said. "It more likely flopped around like a seal rather than walked like a horse."
The longer snout suggests Tiktaalik bit at prey like a crocodile, rather than sucking on it like a fish.
However, calling this a 'fishapod' is crap!
"I would say it's a key transitional form in the fish-to-land animal transition," said study co-author Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago. "It has features of both fish and tetrapods — we call it a 'fishapod.'"
Don't make science less interesting by branding good discoveries with a Soviet consumer brand. And Fishcroc doesn't work either. If it did eat like a crocodile, using strong jaws to catch its prey, then which land creatures did it catch? Crabs?