Page 10 - Research 1.0

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Based in part on the fact that no tetrapods, (terrestrial
vertebrates) exist in the fossil record prior to about 370
million years ago, the Theory of Evolution would predict that
tetrapods evolved from fish. If that were the case, there
should have existed at one time a fish with characteristics

of both fish and tetrapods. In other words a Transitional
Species. Until about 2005, there was little evidence for such
a creature. There were however, a class of fish called
Sarcopterygians or Lobe Finned Fishes, that dominated
Devonian seas. What characterized those lobe finned fishes
was that those fins were supported by external bones and
muscles. Those bones, a single bone, connected to two bones
connected to smaller bones, are analogous to the limb bones

of all tetrapods, including humans. Most Sarcopterygian
Fishes have long been extinct, but they are survived today by
two species of coelacanth and six species of lungfish.
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/sarco/sarcopterygii.h
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Still, what was missing was a fossil showing characteristics

of fish AND tetrapods. When Neil Shubin and his team decided
to search for a fossil that filled the gap between the Lobe
Finned Fishes that dominated Devonian Seas and the earliest
tetrapod fossils represented by Ichthyostega and Acanthostega
dated about 370 mya. Since those fossils were found in
geologic deposits indicating a freshwater environment and if
the Theory of Evolution is correct in its hypothesis that
tetrapods evolved from fish, then transitional fossils should
be found in similar deposits somewhat older in age. The
problem was that geologic deposits of that age are exposed at

few places on the earth's surface. Fortunately, a great deal
of geologic exploration has been done throughout the world,
financed often times by oil and mining interests. They