Exclusive: 600-million-year old blobs are earliest animals ever found
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132142-700-exclusive-600-million-year-old-blobs-are-earliest-animals-ever-found/
Fossils in China suggest that that some of the first animals in existence may have been carnivorous comb jellies similar to some species that still exist today
Ron Offermans, Buiten-beeld/FLPA
MOVE over, Dickinsonia. This 558-million-year-old creature was named the earliest known animal last year, but New Scientist can now exclusively reveal one that existed even earlier – by more than 40 million years.
This previously unknown animal comes from 600-million-year-old rocks in China and doesn’t have a name yet. While Dickinsonia was an Ediacaran – a primitive group of organisms that went extinct about 541 million years ago – the unnamed animal seems to have belonged to a group of animals that still exists today: comb jellies. …