“A happy convergence of brilliance, tenacity, opportunity, generosity and modesty”
Palaeontologist Jennifer Clack, who made groundbreaking discoveries on the emergence of vertebrates out of water and onto land, died on 26 March at age 72. Clack transformed our knowledge of the four-legged, salamander-like animals that evolved from fish and slowly adapted to surviving outside water, starting 419 million years ago. Some of her most celebrated finds came from a 1987 Greenland trip, inspired by her chance discovery of a specimen in a museum drawer in Cambridge, UK. These finds included animals that had seven or eight toes on each foot. “A happy convergence of brilliance, tenacity, opportunity, generosity and modesty enabled Clack (née Agnew) to rejuvenate an entire research field,” writes Per Ahlberg, one of Clack’s students who was part of her Greenland expedition.
Nature | 5 min read
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