all Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. stories

Evolution explored from all angles

50443248 — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:10:20 -0400

From humanity’s close relationship to chimpanzees to the missing link between land and sea creatures, the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) has capped off a year celebrating Darwin and “On the Origin of Species” with a new exhibit that puts evolution front and center.

Chance favored expedition leader in ‘missing link’ discovery

50443248 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:14:12 -0400

A graphic in an undergraduate geology textbook serendipitously led to the 2004 discovery of the missing link between fish and land animals far in the Canadian Arctic, one of the creature’s discoverers said during an April 16 lecture at Harvard.

Neil Shubin, a professor at the University of Chicago and leader of the expedition that discovered Tiktaalik roseae, dedicated his career to finding an intermediary between lobe-finned fishes, which existed some 380 million years ago and early land animals, the first of which is thought to have existed 365 million years ago.

Boning up on frogs' defenses

404132862 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:13:51 -0400

Harvard biologists have determined that some African frogs carry concealed weapons: when threatened, these species puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes, using the bones as claws capable of wounding predators.

The unusual defense mechanism is described by Harvard's David C. Blackburn, James Hanken, and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., in a forthcoming issue of the journal Biology Letters.

Finding a fossilized needle in an Arctic haystack

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:27:54 -0400

The first season searching Arctic Canada for a fossil that would illuminate how our ancestors first crawled onto land proved Harvard Professor Farish Jenkins' explorer's maxim: Never go any place for the first time.

A crew of six trudged through a barren landscape during the summer of 1999, finding the wrong sort of rocks scattered across the wrong sort of terrain. In addition to dealing with the frustration and isolation, researchers had to keep a wary eye peeled for predators, since the islands of Arctic Canada are the stomping grounds for polar bears. So along with their scientific gear, the researchers carried rifles in case of an encounter.

Missing link crawls out of muck

50443248 — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:19:36 -0400

Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs, and parts of the limbs that are similar to four-legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fishlike features such as a primitive jaw, fins, and scales.

Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:26:14 -0400

Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs, and parts of the limbs that are similar to four- legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fishlike features such as a primitive jaw, fins, and scales.

"This previously unknown, extinct animal represents the beginning of the emergence of fish onto land, and the evolutionary transformation of fins into limbs," says Farish A. Jenkins Jr., Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard and curator of mammalogy and vertebrate paleontology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

These fossils, found on Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada, are the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The new find is described by scientists at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in two related research articles highlighted on the cover of the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature.

"Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animal both in terms of its anatomy and its way of life," says Neil Shubin, professor and chairman of organismal biology at the University of Chicago.