How land animals became marine animals: 'They followed their stomachs'

How land animals became marine animals: 'They followed their stomachs'

Two-hundred-fifty million years ago, approximately 90 percent of species in the ocean went extinct. Land-dwelling animals adapted to available resources, spending more time feeding on the coast -- and then eventually living in the water. "They followed their stomachs into the ocean," says Neil Kelley, a Peter Buck postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

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