Scientists still debate where exactly life on Earth began — some argue that deep-sea thermal vents are the best candidates, while others suggest that Darwin’s “warm little pond” theory is more likely. Still, it’s usually agreed that complex life arose in the oceans.
But which animals first made that dangerous foray onto land, leaving the only home complex life had ever known? And why?
Google it and you’ll see suggestions that Tiktaalik or Ichthyostega were the first explorers to break that barrier. But in fact, the arthropods may have beat them by hundreds of millions of years, and for a particularly odd reason: Rather than trying to leave the water, they were perhaps trying to dip back into it.
