You might think that lungs arose when ancient fish evolved to live on land and that feathers came about as the reptilian ancestors of birds took flight. You would not be alone. But you would be entirely wrong. These remarkable adaptations evolved long before the functions for which they are now well known. And they are not exceptions; they illustrate general principles behind many of life’s great revolutions, ones that apply to the origins of organs, tissues, and even DNA.
I explore these principles and how they’ve functioned over billions of years of evolution in my latest book, Some Assembly Required.
Consider vertebrates’ transition from life in water to life on land, a shift that happened more than 370 million years ago. For the descendants of fish to adapt to their new terrestrial lifestyle, virtually every anatomical feature had to change. Life on land requires limbs with numerous joints, a ...
