Lyrics

Tiktaalik Rosaea - The Missing Link
©2006 Stephen M. Baird, M.D.

In Canada?s northlands once lived a great fish
The water he?d paddle, the mud he would squish
Tiktaalik roseae, his Nunavut name,
And now let me sing you the cause of his fame.

Life started in water biologists say.
Then crawled on the shoreline and off on its way.
Evolving to mammals that filled all the lands,
From fishes with lobe fins to humans with hands.

Chorus:
Tiktaalik, Tiktaalik, you old Missing Link!
Tiktaalik, Tiktaalik, were you on the brink
Of crawling from grandpa, Eusthenopteron,
To Acanthostega, and then to waltz on?

And how did the fish fins become hands and feet?
That we could stand up on or hold forks to eat?
Tiktaalik roseae is showing us how
Its forelimbs were changing to what we have now.

Bridge:
Itty bitty fingers, rudimentary wrists -
Elbows, shoulders, say the scientists.
Itty bitty fingers, rudimentary wrists -
Warming the hearts of evolutionists.

Transitional fossils are all rather rare
But they are not absent, as some would declare.
Tiktaalik roseae is one that fits in.
Looks like evolution?s supported again.

Chorus:
Tiktaalik, Tiktaalik as time ticked along -
Tiktaalik, Tiktaalik, you earned your own song.
Tiktaalik, Tiktaalik, now let us all clap.
Without you we would not have toes we could tap.

Coda:
And you also led to the wings that birds flap.