Stephanie E. Pierce collaborated with London's Royal Veterinary College to help explain how tetrapods (animals with limbs - hands and feet and fingers and toes) arose from animals that were fish with fins and lived in water. The team examined fossil evidence using the innovative technique, anatomical network analysis (AnNA) and found a pattern not before seen. The study published in
May 8 issue of Science Advances helps to explain how sea-dwelling creatures' fins became specialized limbs made to use on dry land. Pierce continues her work on understanding these changes by studying how land-based tetrapods came to walk.
Harvard Gazette 
