You are a fish

We all have an ancestor. We go up that line, and most of you may expect a chimpanzee or so. But who we really end up to is a fresh, boned fish. How is that possible?

Not many people realize this important fact about fish. They are the ancestors of all four-limbed back-boned creatures of Earth. It’s obvious why this transformation seems impossible. 99% of the fish today have delicate fins formed of a series of thin spines covered by a thin web of skin, and it seems impossible for those fins to turn into limbs. But the ancestors of us are a far more foreign type of fish. 420 million years ago, the bony fish evolved into two types. Those with flimsy ray-type fins like the fish today, and those with more hard and firm bones that are attached with a single strong bone even in the fins.

At first, those lobe-boned fish far outnumbered the ray-finned fish. But as soon as the lobe-boned fish started adapting to life in the water, global climate change caused a mass extinction, devastating the fish population. After the catastrophe, the ray fins recovered and far outnumbered their bony cousins. But the lobe-boned fish never recovered. Fortunately, a few lucky survivors in the shallow made their way to land and evolved into every four-limbed backbone creature ever to live on Earth.

So, telling somebody that they are a fish is no wrong statement. Because in the end, our ancestor were bony and lucky fish.