You are a teaching assistant for an introductory biology laboratory. you would like your students to see connections between admittedly very different looking and functioning creatures that make up the major groups of vertebrates. what structures could you point to in the bony fish that have connections in the evolutionary framework to higher vertebrates

The correct answer is skeletal development resulting in the movement of amphibians onto land and possibly evolved from lobe-finned fishes.

The initial lobe-finned fishes are bony fish with lobed, fleshy, paired fins that are connected with the body by a solitary bone. The fins of the lobe-finned fishes vary from those of all other fish in that each is borne on a lobe like, fleshy, scaly stalk protruding from the body.

This skeletal development will show that the species first developed in water and then gradually move onto the land and ultimately developed as species of land.