When Fish First Breathed Air

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/eons 385 million years ago, a group of fish would undertake one of the most important journeys in the history of life and become the first vertebrates to live on dry ground. But first, they had to acquire the ability to breathe air. Thanks to Ceri Thomas for the Ichthyostega reconstruction. Check out more of Ceri s paleoart at http://alphynix.tumblr.com and http://nixillustration.com And thanks as always to Nobumichi Tamura for allowing us to use his wonderful paleoart: http://spinops.blogspot.com/ Lastly, this episode (as well as most episodes of Eons) features beautiful paleoart from Studio 252mya. We dare you to try to not spend hours looking at their work: http://252mya.com Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03893 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04196 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/neu.10129/full https://academic.oup.com/icb/article-abstract/47/4/510/632798 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003101820500444X https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936207/ http://www.academia.edu/download/43683790/The_Miguasha_Fossil-Fish-Lagersttte_a_co20160313-6133-10389ml.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/352234a0 http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/3/161030.abstract https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04637 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4022 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-marine-biological-association-of-the-united-kingdom/article/gill-morphometry-of-the-mudskipper-boleophthalmus-boddarti/75020B7318843E349EE0109C8C1E98AF https://www.nature.com/articles/37918 https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9086 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003456877090068X https://www.nature.com/articles/463040a http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133801 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08623 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569904804002022 http://www.academia.edu/download/30666810/nature11124.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/111/3/893.full