Although incredible, as early as Darwin's theory of evolution, it was mentioned that humans originated from some kind of aquatic animal. Of course, evolution is a very long and random process, and past fossil studies have shown that it took nearly 370 million years from the first bony fish that ventured onto land to the emergence of humans.
However, it seems that the evolutionary history of land animals has gradually been sorted out, and the theory of evolution seems to be correct, but with the discovery of new fossils, a scientific research team from the University of Chicago in the United States has found that the first bony fish that landed were not the ancestors of primitive tetrapods. So, what's going on here?
Is evolution wrong? The new fossils give a different answer
In March 2020, a research team at the University of Chicago in the United States obtained a new fossil of primitive fish that an expedition team inadvertently sent during an expedition to the Arctic Circle in Canada.
Through CT scans of the fossil, the researchers found that the fossil was wrapped in a very complete fin, and the scales on it and the fragments of its jawbone could be seen.
With the deepening of the research, scientists have found that it seems to be in a new stage of evolution, some body structure, so that it looks very similar to the "Tik Talik Fish" previously found in Canada, except that the study believes that the Tik Talik fish eventually stayed on land, but this newly discovered primitive fish is more like a close relative of the Tik Talik fish.
Researchers will be this ancient new species, named Qikiqtania wakei, its size is not large, the whole is only 2.5 cm long, you know, and its contemporaneous "TikTalik fish", fossil recovery, the body length is 2.5 meters.
The study found that Qikiqtania wakei had been to land, and their unique skeleton showed that he had walked on land, but, for some reason, it did not go further, but after a short life on land, it returned to the ocean.
This discovery also made researchers realize that the first fish that ventured to land were not all "braveists", and that they could have created a new world on land like the "Tiktalik fish", but when they were about to succeed, they gave up.
However, this discovery does not mean that the theory of evolution is wrong, because in the process of the evolution of life on Earth, there is a lot of uncertainty in itself, for example, the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees were once from the same ancestor, but in the later evolutionary choices, the ancestors of chimpanzees did not take a brave step, which also determined that they can only be animals, and humans have become intelligent life.
So, how did the "TikTalik Fish" change from fish to human in more than 300 million years?
The "Tiktalik" lived 375 million years ago, and strictly speaking, it is already in the transition stage from primitive fish to primitive amphibians, because it can not only live in the water, but also stay on land for a short time, and as it spends more and more time on land, its limbs begin to evolve and acquire the characteristics of early quadrupeds.
As for what made the "Tiktalik fish" climb onto land, the study believes that it is related to the climate change of the Devonian Earth, coupled with the orogeny that began in the Silurian Period, which led to the continuous expansion of the Earth's land area, and some fish living in shallow waters were forced to evolve "new skills" in order to survive.
To put it simply, they will not be eliminated by the laws of nature only if they are forced to go ashore to make a living, so after thousands of years of evolution, the "Tiktalik fish" has become an amphibian, and after that, amphibians have become reptiles, after which the creatures on land have begun to evolve rapidly.
Because from the Triassic, early reptiles began to become dinosaurs, pterosaurs and mammals, of which mammals are known to everyone and can be regarded as the ancestors of humans, after all, even if humans are the only intelligent life on earth, they still belong to the category of mammals.
However, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, early mammals have always been suppressed, after all, the mammals at that time were only the size of mice, compared with the huge dinosaur families on the earth, it is not worth mentioning at all, and can only survive in the cracks.
However, a mass extinction of life 66 million years ago suddenly made dinosaurs history, and all of a sudden, the earth's ecological circle vacated a lot of places, and new species continued to "check and fill the gaps", so mammals and birds quickly became the new rulers of the earth, the evolution rate is getting faster and faster, and new species are constantly being born.
In the case of mammals, it took only 10 million years to evolve the most primitive primates, and naturally, their appearance means that humans have a chance to be born.