The Evolution of Lungs

12 Jun, 2025 570 Biology

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some fish found an evolutionary advantage in getting their oxygen from air rather than water. Breathing with lungs may have started with fish filling their mouths with air and forcing it down into sacs in their chests, like the buccal pumping that frogs do now, and slowly their swimming muscles adapted to work their lungs like bellows. While lungs developed in different ways, there are astonishing continuities: for example, the distinct breathing system that helps tiny birds fly thousands of miles now is also the one that once allowed some dinosaurs to become huge; our hiccups are vestiges of the flight reaction in fish needing more oxygen; and we still breathe through our skins, just not enough to meet our needs.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Steve Brusatte 4 episodes
    Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh
  • Emily Rayfield 2 episodes
    Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol
  • Jonathan Codd No other episodes
    Professor of Integrative Zoology at the University of Manchester

Reading list

  • Air-filled postcranial bones in theropod dinosaurs: physiological implications and the 'reptile'-bird transition
    Roger B. J. Benson, Richard J. Butler, Matthew T. Carrano and Patrick M. O'Connor (Biological Reviews: Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2011)
  • The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
    Steve Brusatte (Mariner Books, 2018) Google Books →
  • Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods
    Jennifer A. Clack (Indiana University Press, 2012) Google Books →
  • Lung Evolution in vertebrates and the water-to-land transition
    Camila Cupello et al (eLife, 2022)
  • The Respiratory System
    Andrew Davies and Carl Moore (Elsevier, 2010) Google Books →
  • Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution
    Kenneth Kardong (McGraw-Hill Education, 2018) Google Books →
  • Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs
    Ye Li et al (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2025)
  • Sauropod Gigantism
    P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss (Science, 2008)
  • Respiratory Physiology of Vertebrates: Life With and Without Oxygen
    Goran Nilsson (Cambridge University Press, 2010) Google Books →
  • What came first, the lung or the breath?
    Steven F. Perry et al (Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A: Molecular & Integrative Biology, 2001)
  • Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs
    Michael J. Stephen (Grove/Atlantic, 2022) Google Books →
  • The evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs
    Mathew J. Wedel (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2010)

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Programme ID: m002d8t2

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002d8t2

Auto-category: 573.2 (Respiratory system)