Did the first creature on earth have lungs or gills?

Question

Evolution and evolutionists would have us all believe that life on earth began from a single cell organism that “evolved” into every living creature on earth today. My question is, did that first living creature that crawled out of the proverbial primordial ooze have lungs, gills? If it was gills, when it came up on land did it gasp for breath and run back into the water, only to repeat that process until lungs developed? How did the transition from water breather to air breather happen?

Answer 1

According to Genesis 1:20, sea creatures, both mammal and fish, and birds were created at the same time. This was not beyond God's capability.

Answer 2

Neither. Single cells did not require special air exchange systems.

The arrival of vertebates on land saw the development of lungs from fish with gills. A structure in fish , the swim bladder, was initially use to create buoyancy. It is an outpouching of the gastrointestinal tract that shares many features with the lungs. Some fish have lungs, so the question is not completely answered. The transitional forms come from the shallows, so is the lung a precursor that remains in fish that went back into the water full time, or did the lung enable extended stays on land? The invasion of land was a slow process with transitional forms that probably started in shallows and made increasing forrays onto land and may have been as limited by legs as air.

Answer 3

Fish existed long before lungs did, so gills come first.

However, some of the transitional forms are still alive -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish

So, do your research, and when you have more informed questions (note -- I'm not saying 'better' or 'intelligent', you asked a valid question, and this is a valid answer) we can help you further in understanding this.


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RB, the fossil record does not in fact record your claim that land and sea going animals occur simultaneously. The fossil record clearly shows hundreds of millions of years of purely aquatic life prior to the development of terrestrial animals.

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ES, the first life forms were so simple that, much like modern bacteria, they were able to simply absorb what they needed from the environment. In fact, your individual cells still operate on this very principle, it's just that the collective action of the group provides them all an environment where they can do just this. It is analogous to a bacterial biofilm, where bacteria will build up in such large numbers that chemical signals from the group will cause outer layers to cease doing much but producing a protective slime, while the inner layers go about the business of processing food into energy molecules, which are then excreted so that those bacteria not worrying too much about energy but about exuding that slime have enough energy -- this is in effect a basic organism with differentiated tissues. The only thing missing is general cohesiveness amongst the various cells.

Answer 4

~~~ Safe,,,, Consider this then,,,,No plants have lungs or gills and yet still 'breathe the air',,, Also the term "Osmosis" can apply as some animals have a capacity to 'breathe through the skin'. Your ignorance is only exceeded by your unwillingness to accept Scientific Fact and your faith in The Clergy. This is only a small example why educated atheists as myself don't look to The Church for Science, otherwise we ALL would still be under the Impression that the Sun and Entire Universe revolves around this stationary little rock called Earth.

Answer 5

The ones that could only last a few seconds would die when coming out of the water. They didn't get to breed. The next generation could last a little longer because it didn't have as many non-breather characteristics. Continue for a million years - gills to lungs.

Answer 6

The difference between lungs and gills is the medium in which they are immersed. Gills can extract oxygen from oxygenated water, lungs can extract it from oxygenated air. A gill will function, albeit poorly, in air as long as it stays moist. Primitive fish with air bladders (which began as a mechanism to assist in swimming) found that at the shoreline having an air bladder which interacted with the gills allowed them to stay partly out of the water for longer periods which enabled them to exploit a new ecological niche as the top predator or, conversely, escape from larger predators who were confined to deeper water. There are modern fish who still show this level of adaptation. As these fish found more reason to remain on land they developed more efficient gill/lungs and, eventually, lost the function of gills entirely.

While ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny, in the strong sense, certain aspects of embryonic development do show clearly the development of some adaptations and the development of lungs from gills is one of the prime examples. You've done it yourself (and, it would appear, you understood as much about it at the time as you do now).

Answer 7

those evolutionists are so crazy. As if they didn't know that life started on earth when god took some mud, made a little toy statue, and breathed life into it.

It's amazing that people would believe in this evolution stuff when all they really have to do is look down at the ground to find our ancestors. right?

Answer 8

One question genius?

Did you grow from a single celled organism and begin your life with gills? Yes you did.

Answer 9

Has it ever occcurred to you that humans have lungs but are born in a fluid filled sac and "breathe" liquid for the first nine months of their lives??

Oh yeah, I forgot - Christians know NOTHING of science.

Answer 10

Have you never seen a mud skipper-therein lies your answer. It's a fish that spends much of its time on land-in the future it may evolve to be fully terrestrial or fully aquatic depending on environmental pressures.