On planets like Earth that were completely covered in water at an earlier stage, we may expect that life developed on a wide variety of environments before the dry land of the crust first appeared above the surface of water.
Besides in the water itself, life could have developed on and beneath the sea floor, in sea caves with portions that are not covered in water, on ice bergs, ice shells like that of Europa, glacial ice caves, floating islands of plants or "pumice rafts", and so on.
When interpreting ancient life forms and previous geological ages, we should be cautious about jumping to conclusions about lifeforms that may have lived in a dry terrestrial environment. Just because an organism can dig or walk or thrives in an environment that is not fully aquatic does not necessarily mean that an exposed dry surface of the continental crust existed yet.
An animal with lungs that breathes air does not require dry land masses yet- a lungfish can swim up to the surface of the water without any dry land exposed to breathe the air of the atmosphere. The existence of animals with lungs and legs do not mean dry land was necessarily present yet.
There is an assumption in the standard model that dry land was there all along for animals to just walk onto. This assumption is no longer supported and geology and biology must take into account Wolynski's Elysium transition of when dry land first appeared on the Earth.
Also worth noting here: it is hypothesize that in the ice shell of Europa, we may find something like isolated pockets of water similar to lakes and rivers embedded in the surface of the ice. This is another interesting type of environment to consider for the development of life. Earth, for example, may have gone through an ice-world stage where the outer surface of the worldwide ocean was frozen over.
A floating island is a mass of floating aquatic plants, mud, and peat ranging in thickness from several centimeters to a few meters. Sometimes referred to as tussocks, floatons, or suds, floating islands are found in many parts of the world.
A pumice raft is a floating raft of pumice created by some eruptions of submarine volcanoes or coastal subaerial volcanoes.
Pumice rafts have unique characteristics such as the highest surface-area-to-volume ratio known for any rock type, long term flotation and beaching in the tidal zone, exposure to a variety of conditions, including dehydration, and an ability to absorb many potentially advantageous elements/compounds. For at least these reasons, astrobiologists have proposed pumice rafts as a possible ideal substrate for the origin of life.[1]
Biologists have suggested that animals and plants have migrated from island to island on pumice rafts.
Jeffrey Wolynski - Stellar Metamorphosis - The Elysium Transition:
https://vixra.org/pdf/1808.0590v1.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice_raft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_balloon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benthic_zone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benthic_fish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglofauna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_fauna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stygofauna
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