Amphibious

Aquada-car speeding in water
MSN autos

amphibious  (amfi - both bios - life)

Nobody makes inventions among the created beings as man. But even for us the building of a usable amphibious vehicle is a challenge and they do not come cheap. Water has its resistance where rotors and sails and steams help and rudder is important. On the roads we need wheels and driving wheels and engines to have a working self-moving auto mobile.

Not for nothing evolutionary biologist call the beginning of life on dry land during the Devonian period one of the most momentous events in the history of life on Earth.


Water OR land
Fish and fish-like animals find it fun and efficient to move in water. Two legged man needs there special skills to move around or to dive. Without technical help man is no match to dolphins in swimming competition.

On land horses gallop and enjoy the wind in its hair flowing. But in deep water those powerful four legs are of little use and drowning is a real threat as water fills its lungs made for breathing air.

On land fish is as good as dead with its gills made for breathing in water. That powerful tail does not move it far only makes some desperate jumps. Unless it gets quickly back to water its life is over.

Water AND land 
God thus had quite a challenge in bringing animal life from water to land. Water was teeming with life fully adapted to the conditions and able to get the daily portion of oxygen directly from water.

Scientist suggest that the solution moving living beings to dry land was in an intermediate amphibious animal that

• was able to breath in water with gills and was also able to breath air with lungs on land
• was able to swim in water, catch food and escape predators, but was also able to move on dry land using its front fins 

Land only

The theory goes that when such amphibious animals called tetrapods had spend enough time in water AND land they adapted to life on land ONLY.  

Through such a middle animal, amphibious beings, life could have moved from water to land.

Evidence for such animals have been searched in the Devonian period, the Age of Fish, when also plants start to flourish on dry land and even first trees appear.  

Since many land ONLY animals are known from Carboniferous period they must have arrived from somewhere in Devonian.  

Noah animal?
Tetrapod is in a way a kind of Noah since scientists think that ALL LAND ANIMALS are its children, including us humans.

For this reason the Devonian period is of such central importance to the study of the history of life on Earth.

There is time when life was found only in water.

There is time when life is found both in water and on land.

In the beginning of life on dry land there was tetrapod.