This is the oldest living creature on Earth
Scientists have confirmed that the oldest living animal on Earth evolved from the first animals from which humans also came
The jellyfish-like creature, known as a ctenophore, first appeared 700 million years ago – compared to dinosaurs birthed 230 million years ago.
The study determined ctenophores are the closest relatives of the first animals and can be found swimming in today’s oceans and aquariums.
A University of California, Berkeley team set out to solve the relationships of the animal tree of life, providing a better understanding of origins and evolution.
The findings have also put to rest the long-held debate that sea sponges were the first animals because their fossils date about 600 million years.
Ctenophores have eight sets of cilia, similar to tentacles, running down their sides, which they use to propel through the oceans as they travel more than four miles below the surface.
Daniel Rokhsar, University of California professor and co-corresponding author of the study, said in a statement: ‘The most recent common ancestor of all animals probably lived 600 or 700 million years ago.
‘It’s hard to know what they were like because they were soft-bodied animals and didn’t leave a direct fossil record. But we can use comparisons across living animals to learn about our common ancestors.
‘It’s exciting — we’re looking back deep in time where we have no hope of getting fossils, but by comparing genomes, we’re learning things about these very early ancestors.’
The team explained that most people think of worms, flies, mollusks, sea stars and vertebrates when they think of animals.
For comparison, worms evolved about 500 million years ago and vertebrates appeared about 450 million years ago.
Together these are called bilaterians, which have a head with a centralized brain, a gut running from mouth to anus, muscles and other shared features that had already evolved by the time of the famed ‘Cambrian Explosion’ around 500 million years ago.
Jellyfish are categorized as bona fide animals, which lack many bilaterian features — for example, they lack a defined brain and may not even have a nervous system or muscles — but still share the hallmarks of animal life, notably the development of multicellular bodies from a fertilized egg.
The evolutionary relationships among these diverse creatures — specifically, the order in which each lineage branched off from the main trunk of the animal tree of life — have been controversial.
‘Traditionally, sponges have been widely considered to be the earliest surviving branch of the animal tree, because sponges don’t have a nervous system, they don’t have muscles, and they look a little bit like colonial versions of some unicellular protozoans,’ Rokhsar told SWNS.
‘And so, it was a nice story: First came the unicellular protozoans, and then sponge-like multicellular consortia of such cells evolved and became the ancestor of all of today’s animal diversity.
‘In this scenario, the sponge lineage preserves many features of the animal ancestor on the branch leading to all other animals, including us.
‘Specializations evolved that led to neurons, nerves and muscles and guts and all those things that we know and love as the defining features of the rest of animal life.
‘Sponges appear to be primitive since they lack those features.’
The other candidate for earliest animal lineage is the group of comb jellies, popular animals in many aquariums.
While they look superficially like jellyfish, the two are only distantly related.
Unlike common jellyfish that squirt through the water, ctenophores propel themselves with eight rows of beating cilia arranged down their sides like combs. Along the California coast, a common ctenophore is the one-inch-diameter sea gooseberry.
Each species has a characteristic chromosome number — humans have 23 pairs — and a characteristic distribution of genes along chromosomes.
The researchers had previously shown that the chromosomes of sponges, jellyfish and many other invertebrates carry similar genes, despite more than half a billion years of independent evolution.
This discovery suggested that the chromosomes of many animals evolve slowly, and allowed the team to computationally reconstruct the chromosomes of the common ancestor of these diverse animals.
‘At first, we couldn’t tell if ctenophore chromosomes were different from those of other animals simply because they’d just changed a lot over hundreds of millions of years,’ said Rokhsar.
‘Alternatively, they could be different because they branched off first before all other animal lineages appeared. We needed to figure it out.’
The researchers joined forces to sequence the genomes of another comb jelly and sponge, as well as three single-celled creatures that are outside the animal lineage: a choanoflagellate, a filasterean amoeba and a fish parasite called an ichthyosporean.
Rough genome sequences of these non-animals already existed, but they did not contain the critical information needed for chromosome-scale gene linkage: where they sit on the chromosome.
Remarkably, when the team compared the chromosomes of these diverse animals and non-animals, they found that ctenophores and non-animals shared particular gene-chromosome combinations, while the chromosomes of sponges and other animals were rearranged in a distinctly different manner.
Prof Rokhsar said: ‘That was the smoking gun — we found a handful of rearrangements shared by sponges and non-ctenophore animals. In contrast, ctenophores resembled non-animals.
‘The simplest explanation is that ctenophores branched off before the rearrangements occurred.’
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Bill
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“It’s hard to know what they were like because they were soft-bodied animals and didn’t leave a direct fossil record. But we can use comparisons across living animals to learn about our common ancestors.”
Yet they “know” these to be the oldest living creature on earth. WTF is wrong with science these days? This isn’t even subjective, it’s flat out speculation at this point.
Hold on. I need another booster mRNA injection designed by a person that dresses like a freaking dog! SCIENCE!
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Gary Brown
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James Webb Telescope FINALLY Proves The Big Bang Theory Is Wrong!
The James Webb Space Telescope was eagerly awaited before its launch last year! However, now that the most powerful and most expensive ever telescope is in operation, the JWST is threatening to turn astronomy upside down with a single finding! The latest pictures from the JWST have proven the Big Bang theory did not happen, sending the scientific community into a frenzy! What are these latest pictures from JWST?
https://youtu.be/b2JLbQBhOJE
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Howdy
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Humans did not evolve from simple animals.
Have a look at Flagella – their whip-like tails are powered by a ‘living motor’, that is claimed is so intricate and perfect, It was by design, not accident or evolution. Sounds right to me.
There was an electron microscope shot decades ago of it’s propulsion system and it looked like a machine. See what you think of this:
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000050
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T. C. Clark
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I bet on the tardigrades…yeah the tardigrades are where it’s at.
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Howdy
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Were tardigrades our ancestors, we would be a proper space-fairing race, TC. They leave us standing on survival alone.
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Koen Vogel
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I suggest the commenters take a deep breath. If you accept that humans had a genetic ancestor who lived 700 million years ago (yes? no?) then the author is suggesting this might be it. There is precious little that remains in rock after 700 million years, so there will not be a smoking gun, but more a trail of a probable family tree leading to the ctenophores. If you accept evolution it has to be some organism so why not the ctenophores? Maybe mushrooms or bacteria will eventually be suggested/proven but for now why not evaluate the post on its evidence? Human-> ape – > ctenophore. I for one welcome our new ancestors, and will endeavour to be nicer to my genetic brethren.
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Howdy
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“Scientists have confirmed that the oldest living animal on Earth evolved from the first animals from which humans also came”
It’s not a probable anything Koen, It’s a claimed confirmation that has been made, so there can be no other sources, unless of course it’s simply jumping the gun, as usual due to over-excitement. It is ludicrous based on the fact the first animals it, and allegedly us Humans came from, are unknown.
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chris
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the only common thing between any animal, living creature and a HUMAN is the periodic table and biological building blocks. To call it evolution is an idiocy.
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Shawn Marshall
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I do not ‘believe’ in Darwinian evolution as a series of unguided happenstance genetic mutations that are selected by fitness to an environment. I think the Almighty made a lot of dog breeds possible because He loves us and man needs a best friend. With over 8 billion people in the world I see little evidence of Darwin’s fanciful theory.
Now for my proof of his dolly: let us examine the deer population in the US. It has exploded over the last 50 years – never heard a good explanation why?
But to the point – millions of these stupid creatures get hit and killed by cars every year. Surely evolution in all this time would have spawned a doe who is so afraid of cars that she would never enter a road if a car could be heard. This trait would immediately be preserved and propagated so that such cautious creatures would soon dominate. In the many lifetimes of deer since the presence of cars and roadways nature has not evolved one sensible deer. They do have innate fears of predators… or perhaps learned fears if you like but fear of zooming cars? …, nada! QED
No? Alright … how about possums? Would you go with that?
Of course I’m joking but hopefully making a point too. My little joke is not as big a joke as Darwinism is… a grand theory based on a paucity of knowledge or data.
Some people who love God believe that Satan, in mocking the Trinity, (he loves to mock God), gave us a Trinity of Demons to birth the Age of Modernism;
Darwin- (anti/theist) sought to remove God from creation
Marx- ( Satan worshipper and low life) sought to remove God from governance and society
Freud- ( sex abuser and pervert) sought to remove God from procreation
These scumbags are heroes today – over a century past their magnificent stupidities.
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Seriously
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Point: God concept was CREATED by humans…end point.
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Shawn Marshall
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Unserious…. Anti-theists pridefully insist that a Creator is not ‘possible’ yet even savages realize that an overwhelming power and intelligence must have made what is.
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aaron
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a creator does not have to be a god
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Seriously
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🤣🤣🤣thanks for the lol…proving my ‘point’. Humans also created words. I briefly viewed a religious program ( of course, asking for money), that was exhorting all the information that laid out the plans for c19, all the damage that’s been shown here, only on TV. Their plan to right the wrongs done? PRAY. Give me a break! You can rely on your ‘faith’ all you want…believe that some almighty creator will come and deliver you from evil….that’s Worked out great so far, right? 😇😇😇😇
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Howdy
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Seriously, you have no comprehension of the big picture, of why people need something to believe in, to hold onto. Why even why you yourself, behave the way you do.
Even disbelief is a belief, as you demonstrate, and try to ‘convert’ people toward.
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aaron
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who is tryin to convert who howdy
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Howdy
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Ah, you finally answered one of my comments Aaron.
Who is trying to convert who? All of us. Whether it’s a belief, or a disbelief, maybe even actual knowledge that just doesn’t fit. A disbelief is still a belief in the opposite.
The hoped-for outcome is the same: agree with the belief of another.
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