Devonian Animals & the Age of Fishes

04Paleozoic

They occupied seafloors for nearly 300 million years, and their compound eyes preserve secrets of early vision.

15Paleozoic

Sharpened jaw plates replaced teeth in this heavily armored apex fish.

33Paleozoic

This giant sea scorpion may have exceeded two meters in length.

37Paleozoic

Bones inside its fleshy fins foreshadowed the limb pattern of land vertebrates.

82Paleozoic

A flat-headed fish with a mobile neck and wrist-like fin bones approached the anatomy of early tetrapods.

102Paleozoic

Bony armor enclosed its head and chest while jointed pectoral appendages steadied it on the bottom.

103Paleozoic

Weight-bearing limbs accompanied a fish-like tail in an animal still deeply tied to water.

122Paleozoic

Naked upright axes rose from creeping rhizomes, preserved cell by cell by silica-rich hot springs.

123Paleozoic

It grew true wood and a tree crown but still reproduced by spores, helping create Earth's first broad forests.

141Paleozoic

Leafless axes rose in stands from creeping stems; conducting cells were present, but true vascular tissue was not.

142Paleozoic

Short axes carried forked sporangia above corm-like bases that could resprout on a repeatedly flooded hot-spring surface.

143Paleozoic

Veinless leaf-like flaps covered its axes, while star-shaped xylem supplied shoots that rose nearly half a meter.

144Paleozoic

Branches more than a meter long carried dense narrow microphylls, far more elaborate than most naked-stemmed plants of its age.

145Paleozoic

Naked axes forked repeatedly, their fertile tips curling inward and carrying paired elongated sporangia.

146Paleozoic

Two rows of kidney-shaped sporangia lined curved branch tips like the teeth of an unfinished botanical zipper.

168Paleozoic

This giant lobe-finned predator used fanglike teeth to ambush prey, while its fin skeleton followed a tetrapod-like pattern.

209Paleozoic

Sensory fields beneath a broad crescent-shaped head shield helped it search through turbid bottom water.

211Paleozoic

A flat head with upward-facing eyes and limb-like bones inside its fins brought it close to the earliest tetrapods.

212Paleozoic

Each forelimb carried eight digits, yet the animal was still mainly aquatic—digits evolved before true land walking.

256Paleozoic

Its long pincers carried slanting blades suited to holding or slicing soft prey.

257Paleozoic

Rows of paired ventral spines formed a defensive fence beneath this small early jawed fish.

258Paleozoic

Its body was a flattened shield with upward-facing eyes and a mouth beneath the front edge.

309Paleozoic

Radiating septa inside a horn-shaped skeleton resemble a stone sun.

311Paleozoic

Fine radial ribs covered rounded shells that once crowded ancient seabeds.