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