Best Paleo Music Video Ever: Tap Your Toes to Tiktaalik
Oh, this will make you smile. Do you remember a fossil called Tiktaalik roseae that was discovered a few years ago? It’s an important transition between aquatic and terrestrial animals; it probably lived in shallow water but had shoulders and wrists that allowed it to walk on land. Now a band called The Indoorfins (Ed. note — groan) has written a very catchy song about it, called “Tiktaalik (Your Inner Fish),” and filmed a clever video of Tiktaalik wandering around Philadelphia. It’s close, but I think this video is even better than the one for Captain Beefheart’s “Smithsonian Institute [sic!] Blues.” (Tiktaalik lived about 300 million years before dinosaurs, but let’s overlook that for a moment for art’s sake.)
We interviewed Neil Shubin for Smithsonian magazine a few years ago, but I have to say that this video tells the story about as well as we did. Neil has since written a delightful book called Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. The University of Pennsylvania had its incoming freshman class read the book and commissioned The Indoorfins to write a song based on the book.
Shubin and his colleagues are still studying their rock star fossil. They recently analyzed its neck, a feature that is useful if you’re on stuck on land and not swimming around in the sea.
One warning: the song’s “tik tik tik tik tik-talik” chorus is likely to curse you with an earworm.
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Such a great tune! The Band’s myspace page says: “The name indoorfins derived from a quip by then guitarist Tony Newman who said his endorphins were “flowing” just prior to meeting his girlfriend. the proverbial change in spelling keeps people guessing. endorphins actually translates to endogenous morphines. endo(inside) geneous(cell) morphines. this means that the body can produce its own morphine in times of overwhelming stress,good or bad. in a sense,that’s what the band attempts to envoke at every gig,no matter how challenging. most crowds are a challenge,so loosen up,relax,have fun. you are responsible for your own good time.”
LOL
Comment by ReBecca — December 12, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
What a great learning tool. If we’re not careful, education may become cool again. I for one had a great time watching this video… and I even learned something new.
Comment by Ryan — December 15, 2008 @ 8:58 am
[...] What often goes unnoticed is that we share a deep history with these animals. They are, as spectacular as it may sound, our distant relatives. As reviewed in a new paper in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, about 398 million years ago there was a particular group of fish, the lobed-fined or sarcopterygian fish, the organisms that gave rise to our common ancestor with the dinosaurs. The fish lived in freshwater and had a series of bones in their limbs. These and other factors made them different from fish whose fins were supported by a series of spines or fine rays. Within the sarcopterygians was the ancestor of creatures that would appear at about 385 million years ago, the “fishapods” like Panderichthys and Tiktaalik. [...]
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[...] will be familiar with some of this year’s rock stars: Svante Paabo, Sean Carroll, Neal Shubin, Lene Vestergaard Hau, and many [...]
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[...] is “missing link.” Another fossil to earn this outdated title was Tiktaalik, which is a transition form between fish and land animals. Neil Shubin spoke with us a few years [...]
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