DEVONIAN TIME PERIODTHE AGE OF THE FISHES

PROJECT BY NICK SNYDER

What the difference in time was between the devonian and the

silurianSilurian:•The first coral reefs appeared•The first vascular plants appearedDevonian:•The first fish appear•The plants a re very small and stuby

• When did the Devonian time period begin?

-The Devonian time period began around 416 million

years ago.

• How long did the Devonian time period last for?-The Devonian time period lasted for 57 million years.

This all leads to mean that the Devonian time period was a part of the paleozoic era.

When This All Happened

An Interesting Fact

Ancient SharksSharks actually developed in this time period

too. They are actually thought to be the descendants of placoderms (the first fish to have

jaws gills and paired fins), but over time they lost their armor on their outside and their bones on the inside of them. They have a body that is

supported by cartilage, which makes fossil evidence very scarce of them. Although their

teeth did usually remain and they gave us fossil evidence and they gave more details about the

sharks.

Interesting Fish From This Time PeriodThe Lung Fish

That is a Lung Fish

•The lungfish developed in the devonian period•It is also called the Dipterus•It looked like a lobe, it had fins with jagged pieces of bone at the ends of them•It had lung sacks that were in its throat•It also could survive whenever there was a drought because it had that ability to actually breathe in oxygen from outside the water, it did this by just sticking its head out of the water and then just breathing in the air!

That is a lobe

Some little details about this Period

Human actually were not around in this era, we didn’t come into the picture until the cenozoic era not in the paleozoic era.

The name devonian actually came from Devon England where the rocks from the Devonian time period were found

Another Fish From the Devonian Time PeriodThe Osteichthyes

That is a Osteichthyes

•This fish is also called the bony fish, it first appeared in the middle of the devonian period•The first osteichthyes’s had lobe-fins•Their lobes had jointed bones•They have pairs of fins, which the top of the fin had fleshy lobes and the bottom of the fin had more typical looking and feeling fins•It is thought that the fishes lobes eventually evolved into legs and they turned into amphibians and lived in and out of the water

Prototaxies

Those are prototaxies

•They are all between 370 to 420 million years old•They are large trunk like structure that can be 3 ft. wide and 30 ft. tall!•They are made up of interwoven tubes that are extremely thin•People are arguing whether or not if it is fungal or if it is lichen•These organisms were very terrestrial and only are known to exist in the devonian and the silurian time periods

EquisetumThat is

equisetum•It is also called “horsetail”•Some of these reached to be 30 ft. tall!•It is known for being the only living fossil in the equisetopsida class•For over one hundred million years this was much more diverse and dominated the understory of the late paleozoic era•It is said that it was misnamed horestail•It has been suggested that the pattern of spacing of nodes in horsetails, wherein those toward the apex of the shoot are increasingly close together

What the Earth was like back then

•The earth back then was generally warm like in the 80’s for the most part

•Most of the land was covered in water at this time which makes sense because the Devonian time period is also known as the “Age of the Fishes”

•Mountains were generally not being built during this time period since the earth was at higher temperatures (in the 80’s)

•The positions of the continents that we have today were NOT in the positions that they were in back then, back then (before Pangaea) the continents looked something like this background.

ResourcesBoyce, Hotton -. "Prototaxites." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Feb. 2012. Web. 02 Mar. 2012.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites>.

-, -. -. "The Devonian Period:." The Age of Fish. -, 2005. Web. 02 Mar. 2012. <http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/devonian_period.html>.

Ogg, Jim -. "Devonian." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 03 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Mar. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian