For many years since Darwin’s time, it was believed that the simplest forms evolved first, but what has been discovered has challenged that sort of thinking. Funding provided by the National Science Foundation helped evolutionary scientists using volumes of genetic data to try and determine the first animal.
What they found was the very first animal was supposedly a jumbo jelly. “This was a complete shocker. So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong.” Casey Dunn said who conducted the research. Sponges were originally thought to be the first animals on earth. Checking and rechecking again, the results were the same. An interesting note of fact, a jumbo jelly fossil from China’s Cambrian fossil beds looked essentially modern. It was dated to early Cambrian – supposedly 540 million years old.
One of the major problems with this so-called discovery is the fact that not only are jumbo jellys complex but are also predators and if the first animal was a predator, what did it eat? The Tree of Life certainly has no profound impact of evidence. While more studies will be conducted in this area, the pattern remains…
For every “gap” filled, science creates new gaps all over again. The process is “inexhaustible.”
–Berlinsky author of book called; The Devil’s Delusion.