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Evolutionary stories take place over millions of years, and are often so wild that no one could have figured it out for themselves. One of the most interesting things that has ever happened is that in the distant past, sea creatures walked, swam, crawled out of the ocean, and evolved to become land animals.
This happens over many generations, with animals that once lived their entire lives in water developing the ability to leave water for periods of time, then evolving to spend more time out of water, and eventually becoming fully terrestrial.
All land animals can trace their beginnings to events of this type since life began in the oceans.
Once animals moved onto land, they expanded and specialized into thousands of different species. But eventually, some of those species started returning to the water.
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This is definitely for hunting, avoiding predators, cooling down, or maybe it was just for fun in the first place. Again, over generations they spent more time in the ocean and eventually became marine animals.
This raises the question of when and how this happened. Of course, these things happened in the distant past, so it may be difficult to unravel them. However, a team of researchers examined the details of hundreds of different museum specimens. They took more than 11,000 new measurements, added photos, and even performed a CT scan.
All this data is entered into the system and can now be studied in more detail than before. Bhart-Anjan Bhullar is an associate professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the Yale School of Arts and Sciences. He is also associate curator of vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate zoology at the Peabody Museum and senior author of this new study published in Current Biology. In a statement about the study, he said:
“Reconstructing the ecology of extinct life forms in a scientifically rigorous way, rather than simply telling a story, is a precise and delicate task. It requires careful interweaving of data from modern organisms, which we necessarily understand much better, and knowledge about the genealogies of these organisms compared to their fossil forms.”
The team had to overcome many challenges when interpreting the data. For example, some species of animals show clear aquatic adaptations to their limbs, while others are more ambiguous. This could indicate that they were once terrestrial, or that their aquatic adaptations took an unusual turn. “This is an important step in this study,” lead author Caleb Gordon, a postdoctoral fellow at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.
“In cases like this, paleontologists often get stuck because the different pieces of evidence don’t agree on what the ancient animals looked like.”
In their study, the researchers found that the best way to determine an animal’s underwater history was to measure hand length, with an accuracy of about 90%.
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Understanding the historical journeys these animals have taken gives us a more complete picture of how different animals evolved. This is interesting not only for better understanding the environment, but also for predicting how animals will continue to adapt to an ever-changing world.
If this sounds interesting, you might want to read about the second giant hole in the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means:
