Who was the first to predict an animal like tiktaalik would exist?

The first to predict the existence of an animal like Tiktaalik was paleontologist Neil Shubin, along with his colleagues. They proposed that transitional fossils between fish and tetrapods would be found in the fossil record, based on evolutionary theory and the anatomical similarities between fish and early land-dwelling vertebrates. Their predictions were confirmed when Tiktaalik, a key fossil representing this transition, was discovered in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic.