Discovery! -Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal

 A newly published finding in Nature magazine suggests that a sponge-like fossil may be the oldest animal ever found (Yes, a sponge is considered an animal). The Tree of Life project explains sponges are living animals that live in the water. They are stuck to the floor in the oceans, sea, and rivers. They are known as Porifera. The Poriferans are simple multi cellular animals. Now that you know they ARE animals, here's the story with a link to the article in Nature magazine: 

(Photo: A black horny sponge (Scalarispongia scalaris) growing off the coast of France. Some types of horny sponge are today harvested for bath sponges.Credit: Biosphoto/Alamy)

(The following short summary was provided by 1440.com) 

Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal

Geologists may have found the oldest animal fossils discovered to date, according to results published yesterday. The specimen, believed to be the remains of an ancient sponge, was uncovered in Canada's remote Northwest Territories—a region that was a rich marine ecosystem roughly a billion years ago. The find is more than 300 million years older than the current earliest confirmed sponge fossil. 

If confirmed, the 890-million-year-old fossil would suggest prehistoric animals arose before conditions on Earth were considered hospitable to complex life (see timeline). It would also mark the first direct evidence of animal life prior to an oxygenation event that culminated roughly 540 million years ago and led to an explosion in animal diversity. 

While animals evolved relatively recently (in geological terms), bacteria have been around much longer—the oldest-known bacterial fossil has been dated to 3.5 billion years ago.

LINK TO THE RESEARCH ARTICLE IN NATURE MAGAZINE: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter