Several stories, not a parade
What would you need to live out of water?
Late Devonian. Tetrapods take steps · Tropical river mouths on an older Earth · Drawing. Not a photograph.
Generated interpretation of later Paleozoic land. Plants, arthropods, and vertebrates came ashore at different times.
First look
What would you need to live out of water?
Wonder. Then look. This is not a test.
Plants left spores by the Ordovician and built forests in the Devonian.
Arthropods walked earlier than vertebrates.
Vertebrates with limbs appear in the Late Devonian. They did not march in a line toward people.
First look is enough. Keep looking is if you want more.
Keep looking
How would we know? Open only if you want the evidence.
Keep looking · Branching, not climbing
Living on land is a set of problems: drying out, supporting a body, reproducing, breathing. Different groups solved them in different ways. Humans are not the point of the Devonian.