Oldest fossil evidence for animals found

Just read the following news articles and thought a few of you would find it interesting.

I did a search here but could not find anything so sorry if its already been posted.


Scientists have found fossilised evidence of life dating back to 63million years ago. Please see links below for full stories.

The discovery in Oman pushes back the earliest accepted date for animal life on Earth by tens of millions of years.

Link: BBC News Article

The oldest fossilized evidence of animals has been unearthed in Oman and reveals that tiny sea sponges were abundant 635 million years ago, long before most of the planet's other major animal groups evolved, according to a new analysis.

Link: MSNBC News Article

Its always really interesting when they find new things like this, I will be looking forward to what else they find from this!


Good find,

Choanocytes! I bet it's some evolved multicellular form that contains choanocytes are specialized cells with flagella that are part of the structure of sponges (the most simple organism).

The metazoan ancestor, “choanoblastaea,” was a pelagic sphere consisting of choanocytes. The evolution of multicellularity enabled division of labor between cells, and an “advanced choanoblastaea” consisted of choanocytes and nonfeeding cells. Polarity became established, and an adult, sessile stage developed.

www.ingentaconnect.com...

A little info, there. The adult sessile stage would be a basic sponge.