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The Cambrian Period witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion, in which most modern phyla first appeared. Fish, arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and synapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean but eventually transitioned onto land, and by the late Paleozoic, it was dominated by various forms of organisms.
While most species today are terrestrial, the first tetrapods were fully aquatic. Amphibians today generally remain semiaquatic, living the first stage of their lives as fish-like tadpoles. Amniotes evolved about 340 million years ago (crown amniotes 318 mya), and their descendants drove most amphibians to extinction.etrapod-like vertebrates first appeared in the early Devonian period. These early stem-tetrapods would have been animals similar to Ichthyostega, with legs and lungs as well as gills, but still primarily aquatic and unsuited to life on land.