Devonian Earth 
DEVONIAN

THE DEVONIAN PERIOD
416 TO 360 Million Years Ago
The Age of Fishes and the Invasion of Land
 Fish Fill the Oceans as Life Pushes Inland from the Seas
There will be large numbers of fish . . . where the river flows everything will live. - Ezekiel 47:9
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Paleo-Geography
  • Euramerica and Gondwana drift towards each other
  • Ocean levels high with wide shallow seas
  • Warm, greenhouse climate
  • The Devonian ends in a major extinction event

Life
  • Fish wildly mutate - placoderms and the first sharks
    proliferate; lobe-finned fish and bony fish appear.
  • Plants explosively diversify on land. Tthe first roots,
    wood stems, seeds and leaves appear
  • Soil appears and nourishes first insects and spiders
  • The first tetrapods develop from lobe-finned fish
    (below right) in shallow, swampy saltwater habitats
  • Fungi thrive on land and sea
  
  Primitive horsetails, club   mosses and 'tree-ferns'   (left) turn lifeless land into   new habitats for life.

 (Image: Universe Review)
Giant Placoderm and Primitive Sharks
Battle in Devonian Seas
(Image: Steve White)
 

The lobe-finned fish Panderichthys (right) was an ancestor of the first tetrapods, air-breathing, terrestrial animals from which the land vertebrates, including humans, are descended.

  (Image: Techno-Science.net)

 

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To the Ediacaran Period To the Cambrian Period To the Ordovician Period To the Devonian Period To the Pennsylvanian Epoch To the Permian Period To the Triassic Period To Paleozoic Timeline To Earth Timeline To Mesozoic Timeline To the Mississippian Epoch To the Silurian Period