Hairy Museum of Natural History

We’ve come once again to the time of year when folks get together and celebrate the birth of a certain Middle-Eastern Fish Man. In keeping with the piscine spirit of the holiday, the Hairy Museum is proud to present work by our resident Curator of Ich-theology, Ray Troll.

Ray’s work takes us back to the Devonian Period (appropriately, “The Age of Fishes”), when a group of lobe-finned fish were taking some of the most radical steps in vertebrate evolution—the shift from an aquatic lifestyle to a terrestrial one. Ray has long been inspired by those who made this great transition, and has created a series of portraits of these notable ancestors, and reflections on what it means to be part of the great lobe-fin family.

After the hustle and bustle of the holiday dies down we’ll get more images up in a dedicated gallery in our expanding Hall of Ich-theology. Until then, however, embrace your inner fish by downloading and playing the following tune, written and performed by Ray in honor of our grand sarcopterygian heritage:

The Devonian Blues
(3.2 MB mp3)

“Your Momma was a lobefinned fish.
My Momma was a lobefinned fish…”

More of Ray’s art, music, and celebration of the fossil record can be found at his outstanding Fin Art website.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Bony Fish, Devonian, Ich-Theology, Tetrapods.

Comments on record: (2)

The journal Nature reports on a redescription of the anatomy of the early tetrapod Ichthyostega, one of the first vertebrates to make the transition from water to land.

Long portrayed as a sort of fish-faced salamander, the new study shows that Ichthyostega had developed some very interesting landlubbing adaptations that were previously unrecognized.

Fish and most other early tetrapods have a spinal column where one vertebra looks quite similar to its neighbors, forming one long bony ribbon that is particularly flexible in side-to-side movements. But the spine of Ichthyostega was quite specialized. It had distinct neck, chest, lumbar (lower back), hip, and tail vertebrae that were largely useless for side-to-side wiggling, but were well adapted for more of a bounding motion, allowing it to galumph across the Devonian shoreline something like a hurried seal.

Pharyngula has more information on the article, including a comparison of old and new skeletal reconstructions. Afarensis has a great writeup on the functional and evolutionary implications of the study, along with several photos of Ichthyostega fossils.

Figures from the Nature article are available here.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Devonian, Tetrapods.

Comments on record: (0)