HISTORY OF LIFE

1. The Origin of Life
   
2. Earth's Earliest Life
   
3. Sex and Nuclei: Eukaryotes
   
4. The Evolution of Animals
   
5. Life in a Changing World
   
6. Extinction
   
7. The Early Vertebrates
   
8. Leaving the Water
   
9. Amphibians and Reptiles
   
10. Reptiles and Thermoregulation
    
11. Triassic Takeover
    
12. Dinosaurs
    
13. Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs?
    
14. The Evolution of Flight
    
15. The Origin of Mammals
    
16. Marine Reptiles
    
17. Why Flowers are Beautiful
    
18. The End of the Dinosaurs
    
19. Cenozoic Mammals
    
20. Geography and Evolution
    
21. Primates
    
22. Evolving Toward Humans
    
23. The Ice Age
    
24. Humans and the Ice Age
    

Leaving the Water

Introduction

• Christopher Scotese's Cool Maps of the Paleozoic World including the
  Early Devonian (390 Ma) or Here for Collision Watchers
  

The Origin of Land Plants

• The oldest life forms which were found in marine sediments are as old as 3.5 billion years, continents remained uninhabited for many hundred millions years. The colonisation of the land by plants and animals did not occur until some 415 million years ago, at the end of the Silurian. Within the geologically relatively short time-span of only some 50 million years, following the first colonisation of the land by small land plants, the flora diversified rapidly and eventually gave rise to the oldest plants with a tree-like growth habit.
  
• A History of Paleozoic Forests
• The Earliest (Silurian) Plants and Plant Spores
• Images of Some Chlorophytes Besides Land Plants

The Earliest Land Floras

• Devonian Sphenophyta were Trees while Today they are Horsetails
• Devonian Lycophyta were Scale Trees Over 35 m Tall while Today they are Club Mosses
• Devonian Plants
• Pertica Quadrifaria: Maine's 390 Ma. State Fossil
• Illustration of the Ancient Lizard-like Reptile, Hylonomus in a Coal Forest (350 Ma)
• Images of Eastern Nevada Fossil Plants (330 Ma)
• Images of Non-flowering Plants
• An Introduction to Ferns
• Links for Paleobotanists
• Fossil Plant Database
• An On-line Botany Course

Comparing Plant and Animal Evolution

• Lecture Notes on Differences between Aquatic and Land Habitats

The First Land Animals

• First Appearances by Group
• The Earliest Animals on Land

Rhipidistians (and Other Lobefins)

• Fossil Bony Fishes
• Very Cool Coelacanth Website
• Recent Discovery of Living Coelacanths 6,000 Miles from Only Previous Known Site
• An Extinct Lungfish
• Living Lungfish
• Image of Lungfish
• Tour of Paleozoic Fishes

The First Amphibian

• Henry Gee's Brief Description of the Creature From the Black Lagoon, the Earliest Tetrapod
• Jenny Clack's Excellent Account of Acanthostega at the Tree of Life Website
• American Museum's Feature on Acanthostega and 3-D Reconstruction (Requires Shockwave Plug-in)
• From Water to Land
• Elginerpeton, the Earliest Amphibian
• Comparison of Eusthenopteron and Acanthostega Skulls
• Douglas Henderson's Illustrations of Hynerpeton bassetti (363 Ma) and Ichthyostega
• Richard Cowen's Locomotion and Respiration in Marine Air-Breathing Vertebrates