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The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which never demonstrate an exact half-way point between clearly divergent forms. [ 40 ] The fossil record is very uneven and, with few exceptions, is heavily slanted toward organisms with hard parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little ...
After 1.5 million years ago (extinction of Paranthropus), all fossils shown are human (genus Homo). After 11,500 years ago (11.5 ka, beginning of the Holocene), all fossils shown are Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans), illustrating recent divergence in the formation of modern human sub-populations.
Pages in category "Transitional fossils" The following 139 pages are in this category, out of 139 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
"Missing link" is a recently-discovered transitional fossil. It is often used in popular science and in the media for any new transitional form. The term originated to describe the intermediate form in the evolutionary series of anthropoid ancestors to anatomically modern humans (hominization).
Tiktaalik is a transitional fossil; it is to tetrapods what Archaeopteryx is to birds, troodonts and dromaeosaurids. While it may be that neither is ancestor to any living animal, they serve as evidence that intermediates between very different types of vertebrates did once exist.
A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. [97] This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group.
The first fossil, a skull fragment of P. inachus, was found in 1981 in Pakistan. Subsequent fossils of Pakicetus were also found in Pakistan, hence the generic name Pakicetus. The fossils were found in the Kuldana Formation west of Islamabad in northern Pakistan and were dated as early to early-middle Eocene in age.
Ambulocetus is among the best-studied of Eocene cetaceans, and serves as an instrumental find in the study of cetacean evolution and their transition from land to sea, as it was the first cetacean discovered to preserve a suite of adaptations consistent with an amphibious lifestyle.