entry
tiktaalik
/tɪkˈtɑːlɪk/Extinct Devonian fish-like tetrapod ancestor
From Inuktitut tiktaalik (Large freshwater fish).
Word Ancestry
Before it became a famous fossil, tiktaalik was an Inuit word for a large freshwater fish, the sort of slippery creature one might imagine lurking beneath Arctic water. In 2006, paleontologists including Neil Shubin announced the animal after fossils were found on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, and they chose a local name rather than dressing the discovery in another layer of Greek or Latin. The choice was unusually vivid: Tiktaalik lived roughly 375 million years ago, yet its flattened head, neck, fins, and wrist-like bones made it look like a fish experimenting with the first awkward steps toward land. Its name therefore links two very different scenes—the Arctic communities whose language supplied it and a Devonian world long before dinosaurs, trees, or humans. Remember tiktaalik as “the fish with a local name and a proto-wrist”: an Inuit word pointing backward into deep evolutionary time.
The Story
Before it became a famous fossil, tiktaalik was an Inuit word for a large freshwater fish, the sort of slippery creature one might imagine lurking beneath Arctic water. In 2006, paleontologists including Neil Shubin announced the animal after fossils were found on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, and they chose a local name rather than dressing the discovery in another layer of Greek or Latin. The choice was unusually vivid: Tiktaalik lived roughly 375 million years ago, yet its flattened head, neck, fins, and wrist-like bones made it look like a fish experimenting with the first awkward steps toward land. Its name therefore links two very different scenes—the Arctic communities whose language supplied it and a Devonian world long before dinosaurs, trees, or humans. Remember tiktaalik as “the fish with a local name and a proto-wrist”: an Inuit word pointing backward into deep evolutionary time.
Kin & Kindred
From 'tiktaalik'·Large freshwater fish; burbot-like fish
Sources
Wikipedia