Prehistoric fish crawls into spotlight at Canadian Museum of Nature

The fossil of a prehistoric fish with strong, wrist-like bones is on public display for the first time in Canada as it awaits the final leg of its long journey back home to Nunavut.

Tiktaalik roseae was discovered on Ellesmere Island in 2004 by two American paleontologists. It made headlines in 2006 as part of a study published in the journal Nature that described Tiktaalik as a “missing link” between fish and land creatures.

Now Tiktaalik is the star of a new exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature that examines the Devonian Period, a pivotal era in the history of life on Earth when fish began to make the transition to land.

Tiktaalik roseae lived its life about 375 million years ago, on the shallow banks of a river or lake in a warm climate. At the time, the landmass and islands that would become Nunavut straddled the equator.

The ocean was teaming with life and predators, and it’s believed these pressures may have helped spur Tiktaalik’s move toward land, said Scott Rufolo, curator for paleobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Known as a “fishapod,” Tiktaalik had scales, fins and gills like fish, but its front fins also had strong bones and a partial wrist, allowing it to push its upper body upwards and out of shallow water.

It grew up to almost three metres long, had a wide and flat head and tail fin similar to an eel’s.

After its discovery, Tiktaalik was stored in the United States in the custody of American researchers. But the specimen is jointly owned by Inuit and the Nunavut government under Article 33 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.

Tiktaalik was transferred to the Canadian Museum of Nature in 2015 for safekeeping until the Nunavut Inuit Heritage Centre in Iqaluit is complete. When that happens, the plan is to move Tiktaalik there.

The Devonian Period ran from 420 to 350 million years ago.

“This is a period dynamic change,” said Michelle Anne Olsen, exhibitions content developer for the Canadian Museum of Nature.

“There are foundations being laid down during this period that are going to inform the natural world as we understand it today.”

The Devonian Period began with little life on land except for insects, bacteria and basic plants. By the period’s end, the land was filled with lush plant life and towering trees. As well, the first vertebrates were making their way on land.

Tiktaalik could have been the ancestor of of all four-limbed land animals on the planet, including humans. Its importance to the paleontology world has been compared to the likes of the hominid fossil Lucy, which provided the first evolutionary link between humans and other species.

“This is our link between [land animals and fish],” said Olsen.

The word Tiktaalik means “a large freshwater fish seen in the shallows” in Inuktitut.

The Canadian Museum of Nature’s exhibit, called Life Onto Land: The Devonian, also features more than 70 other fossils of ancient fish and plants, videos, large murals and photographs, a “living fossil” and a replica of the head of a giant carnivorous fish called a dunkleosteus.

Throughout the exhibit there are signs in English, French, Innuinaqtun and Inuktitut.

Like all exhibits at the museum, admission is free to Inuit and other Indigenous people.

The exhibit opened Friday and runs until Oct. 12, 2026.