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There it is: The Missing Link. Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University discovered it on Ellesmere Island in Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle. I love the name: is an Inuktitut word meaning 'a shallow-water fish' and the fossil was given this name after a suggestion by local Inuit elders.

Ok, it's a fossil. What's its importance? The research institutions involved in the find have teamed up to produce a of the discovery. Palaeontologists say it is a key missing link between fish and land animals, showing how our ancestors first walked out of the water and on to dry land some 375 million years ago. If this is true, the fossil's significance for evolutionary explanation would be at least equal to , the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.

Tiktaalik is clearly exercising the minds of the Creationist community. Following the discovery, quite a view media commentators lauded the find as the final nail in the coffin of Creationism, and (to mix metaphors) another key piece in the evolutionary jigsaw. I doubt very much that Tiktaalik will have very much impact on Creationism. We'll test this point next week on Sunday Sequence, but my sense is that Creationism, as a religious perspective on science, will re-interpret all discoveries of this kind in a way that is consistent with the basic principles of Creationism. Either that, or Creationists will dispute the sigificance, or truth, of the discovery itself. One thing they will not do is abandon Creationism as a faith-perspective.