Nunavut Paleontological Expeditions

Since 1999, Dr. Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences and Dr. Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago (right and left, respectively, in the photo at the upper left) have led several expeditions in search of 370-million-year-old fish fossils in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. This remote region, more than 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, had never been systematically surveyed for these fossils. Their discoveries are helping to unravel the history of life in the pivotal Devonian Period when life first began to leave the cradle of the water and move onto land.

In 2006, Drs. Daeschler and Shubin, in collaboration with Dr. Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. of Harvard University, announced their discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, an animal with a suite of features transitional between the four-limbed tetrapods and their lobe-fin fish precursors. Visit the University of Chicago's website on Tiktaalik for more information.