A Fossil Found on Purpose

Tiktaalik wasn't stumbled upon. Paleontologist Neil Shubin reasoned that an in-between animal should sit in rocks of a certain age, so his team picked Ellesmere Island in the Arctic, where rocks of exactly that age lay exposed at the surface.

After several frozen field seasons, they found it — right where the theory said it should be. That is the quiet power of evolution as science: it doesn't just explain the past, it can predict where the evidence is buried.