BBC Knowledge Asia Edition 3

What did they do?

A team from the

University of Chile has

grown chicken embryos

with ‘dinosaur-like’ lower

legs. In modern-day

birds, the fibula – the thin

CHICKENS

GIVEN

DINO LEGS

bone found in the lower

leg – is splinter-like and

doesn’t reach all the way

to the ankle. Dinosaurs’

fibulae, in contrast, were

much more developed.

How did they do that?

By inhibiting the activity

of a gene going by the

rather bizarre name of

‘Indian Hedgehog’.

Why did they do that?

Around 66 million years

ago, most dinosaurs went

extinct, but a handful of

species survived. These

went on to evolve into the

birds we see today. The

researchers are trying to

use ‘reverse evolution‘

techniques to find out

how this transformation

PHOTOS: NJIT, BARCROFT MEDIA ILLUSTRATOR: JAMES OLSTEIN took place.

THEY DID WHAT?!

The caves in

Thailand where the

fish was discovered

Usually, if you drop a fish on the ground it

will thrash around aimlessly like a fish out

of water. But that’s not the case with

Cryptotora thamicola. Drop one of these

blind, cave-dwelling fish on the ground and

marvel as it walks away like a land animal.

The bizarre fish was found scurrying

around dark caves in Thailand by a team

from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

It can scuttle across rocks and climb up

waterfalls thanks to its salamander-style

pelvic girdle, they say. Other fish, such as

mudskippers and lungfish, have previously

been observed walking, but those species

drag themselves along on their front fins.

The discovery may help to shed light on

how the anatomy needed to walk on land

evolved after the transition from finned to

limbed appendages in the Devonian

period, some 420 million years ago.

“C. thamicola possesses morphological

features that have previously only been

attributed to tetrapods [four-legged

animals],” said researcher Brooke

Flammang. “Its pelvis and vertebral column

allow it to support its body weight against

gravity and provide large sites for muscle

attachment for walking. This research

gives us insight into the plasticity of the fish

body plan and the convergent

morphological features seen in the

evolution of tetrapods.”

WALKING FISH COULD

BE MISSING LINK IN FIN

TO LIMB EVOLUTION

Unlike most fish,

C. thamicola can walk

on dry land

ZOOLOGY