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Article: Arthropods came ashore in shells: gear may have kept gills wet during transition onto land.(Life)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- May 9, 2009
- Author:
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Some of the first creatures to leave the ocean and venture onto land may have done so by carrying a bit of the sea with them. Fossil trackways left on ancient tidal flats 500 million years ago hint that some ocean-dwelling arthropods, like today's hermit crabs, hauled out onto land wearing shells, researchers report in the April Geology. Those shells would have protected the creatures' delicate gills from drying out and may also have held small reservoirs of seawater.
Much scientific attention has focused on the water-to-land transition that vertebrates made around 380 million years ago (SN: 6/17/06, p. 379; 1/31/09, p. 30). But by that era, another group of ...