The First Apex Predators on Earth (that we know of)!
The first predator on Earth looked a lot different than predators on Earth today! These huge arthropods, called Anomalocarids, lived in Cambrian seas about 500 million years ago!
They reached sizes much larger than other organisms at the time and acted as the apex predators in Earth’s very first complex ecosystems. Before the Ediacaran period and Cambrian Explosion, animals did not exist yet.
Sure, microbes ate other microbes on this early, ‘pre-animal’ Earth, but there was no real predation until animals came along. Animals evolved before the Cambrian, in the Ediacaran, but these first animals did not seem to have the complex hierarchy ecosystems that we see later during and after the Cambrian explosion.
The Cambrian explosion marked not only a remarkable diversification of animal life, but also an increase in skeletons, shells, and other hard parts. This ‘skeletonization’ of life was likely in part allowed by changes in ocean chemistry, but the ultimate driver of this increase in organisms with hard parts was predation.
Hard parts provide organisms with protection from predation which, until this time, had not been a threat. However, during the Cambrian explosion, Anomalocarids evolved, which changed everything!
Source: YouTube
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.