Whoops! Scientists Might Have Had the Origin of Animals All Wrong. - Popular Mechanics
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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:The oldest known animal fossils are about 574 million years old, but the fossil record is too sparse to reveal when Earth’s first animals actually evolved. A new study challenges the use of animal-free deposits as evidence of animal absence, showing that one such deposit formed when animals are known to have existed. A molecular clock analysis puts the origin of animals between 700 and 800 million years ago, during or before the global glaciations of Snowball Earth. Cyclomedusa. Dickinsonia. Tribrachidium. These are only some of the strange, soft-bodied creatures that drifted and sprawled across Earth’s seafloors during the Ediacaran Period, which began 635 million years ago and produced the oldest known animal fossils some 574 million years ago. Although these fossils are conventionally treated as the first animals, the timing of animal origins remains unresolved. No animal fossils are known from before the Ediacaran, when the oceans appear to have held little more than protozoans and algae.
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