• Question: What was the first animal on earth. @all

    Asked by Aaron to Adam, Thad, Thomas on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Clements

      Thomas Clements answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      This is a really tough question because what do you count as an animal? Does bacteria count? If so, the oldest cyanobacteria fossil is 3.5 billion years old. The oldest multicellular animal were these weird blob things that look like sponges and are 650-540 million years old.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 19 Mar 2015:

      That’s a helpful answer from Thomas – technically animals are made up of more than one cell (they are multicellular), so the earliest living things (the cyanobacteria) weren’t animals, but they were very much alive!

      But there can be quite a lot of discussion about what makes something an animal!

    • Photo: Thaddeus Aid

      Thaddeus Aid answered on 19 Mar 2015:

      Hi,

      I think Steph and Thomas got to this too fast for me to add much to the answer!

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