Sensory Evolution on the Threshold : Adaptations in Secondarily Aquatic Vertebrates

Ranging from crocodiles and penguins to seals and whales, this synthesis explores the function and evolution of sensory systems in animals whose ancestors lived on land. It explores the dramatic transformation of smell, taste, sight, hearing, and balance that occurred as lineages of reptiles, birds, and mammals returned to aquatic environments.Natural Experiments
Aquatic Tetrapods
Senses in Evolution
Goal and Scope
Amphibians
Aquatic and Semiaquatic Reptiles
Aquatic and Semiaquatic Birds
Aquatic and Semiaquatic Mammals
Vertebrate life became terrestrial about 370 million years ago when a lobe-finned fish evolved into the giant-salamander-like shape of a labyrinthodont amphibian. The transition is well documented in the fossil record, and important discoveries continue to fill out its details. Over the eons subsequent to the water-to-land transition, vertebrates became more and more independent from water. The new land vertebrates
are called tetrapods, a group that includes modern amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
The term refers to their extremities: the replacement
of four paired fins by four paired legs.
Amphibians still return to the water to avoid
dehydration of their eggs and larvae and have
skin that is permeable to water, restricting them