The ‘missing link’ between and fish and salamanders

375 million years ago, a strange being was swimming through the primordial ocean. It had fins, scales and gills like a fish, but it also had a flattened body with eyes placed on top of its head like a salamander. It had ribs to support it for when it occasionally crawled onto land. The fishapod, discovered in 2006, is the long sought-after missing link in the evolution from fish to the first amphibians. It’s the first ancestor of all terrestrial vertebrates, the tetrapods.