The fishy evolution of humans
According to a recent study, it suggests that there is evidence to support Karl Gegenbaur's theory that human limbs may have evolved from shark gills. File picture: Willem Law/Independent Media According to a recent study, it suggests that there is evidence to support Karl Gegenbaur's theory that human limbs may have evolved from shark gills. File picture: Willem Law/Independent Media
London - It may sound a little fishy, but scientists believe our arms and legs could have evolved from the gills of marine creatures.
Studies of the genes of skate and sharks suggest the same genes that make the ridges of a fish’s gill also control the growth of our arms and legs.
The theory that limbs were once fish gills was first proposed in 1878 by German scientist Karl Gegenbaur. Now researchers analysing skate have found a striking similarity between the genes that are programmed to build human legs and those that build gill arches.
In humans the gene dictates which finger will be the little finger and which will be the thumb. Dr Andrew Gillis of Cambridge University led the research, published in the journal Development.
He said: ‘Taken to the extreme, these experiments could be interpreted as evidence that limbs share a genetic programme with gill arches because fins and limbs evolved by transformation of a gill arch in an ancestral vertebrate, as proposed by Gegenbaur.’
But he said it was possible limbs and gill arches ‘evolved separately’ but controlled growth with the same genetic programme.
Daily Mail