Tiktaalik lick my ...

For those of you in the Freaky Fish scene you’ve probably heard enough Tiktaalik roseae by now. (Tiktaalic is a newly discovered fishapod that represents an evolutionary bridge between land tetrapods and fish for those of you living in caves.) Neil Shubin and Ted Daeschler discovered Tiktaalik in northern Canada and reported their finding in the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature. The NY Times did a story on Tiktaalik shortly after, I saw the NY Times, and then I did a story on Tiktaalik for Bluefishcanoe (only narrowly missing scooping the Times). However, blogger failed to publish the story and it was lost to Internet oblivion.

First I assumed the loss of my Tiktaalik story resulted from the usual technological fowl ups that occur when you don’t really know how to make a website. Then I took a closer look at Tiktaalik. Here she is:

Tiktaalik looks exactly like a papier-mâché alligator Mike Murphy and I made (my mom made) in a third grade science fair (papier-mâché alligator not shown). We won third place. But it doesn’t stop there. Maybe the Establishment in the Tiktaalik discovery and reporting scene didn’t want our team consisting for 1986 versions of myself, Mike Murphy and my mom to get the credit we deserve. Using a combination of intuition, luck, and brilliance we predicted the Tiktaalik find without even knowing it, and now They are trying to keep us down. Isn’t it obvious?