Word: devonian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Lungfish are evolutionary survivors of the Devonian period (300-400 million years ago) when many forward-looking fish were experimenting with lungs. The lungfish are related to those intrepid pioneers which crawled up on land to become ancestors of reptiles, mammals and birds; also to the Coelacanths, which had fins like rudimentary limbs and which were thought by scientists to have been extinct for 50,000,000 years?until last year, when an astonishing live Coelacanth was brought up in a fishing net off the South African coast (TIME, April 3). The lungfish of today are evolutionary laggards. By coming...