David Dausey. David J. Dausey is an epidemiologist, professor and academic administrator. He is currently the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is also a Distinguished Service Professor of Health Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
First creature to walk on land 'dragged itself along' on two feet - like it was on crutches. One of the first creatures to walk on land didnât scamper gracefully out of the waves. Instead, the creature, known as Ichthyostega, would have hauled itself up on its front limbs like it was on crutches.
During this time, the theory goes, a group of freshwater plants inched their way onto muddy shores and into swamps and watery lowlands, and true land plants evolved from there. Before that, there was nothing living on the land. But that's not what Gregory Retallack, a geologist at the University of Oregon, thinks. Instead, Retallack argues that that the very first landlubbers belonged to an extinct group of organisms called Ediacara, which last lived on Earth some hundred million years before the rise of amphibious plants.