How Tiktaalik got its neck

New details on how fish got tough enough for land

Those were hard-headed fish that stuck their necks out to move from water onto land. And now fossils of a creature with fins in both worlds show how its hard head and neck evolved.

That first neck fossil belongs to Tiktaalik roseae, a scaly, fishy, shallow-water predator that grew up to nine feet long, says codiscoverer Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago and the FieldMuseum.