The amazing survival strategies of polar marine creatures might help to explain how the first animals on Earth could have evolved earlier than the oldest fossils suggest according to new research. These first, simple and now extinct, animals might have lived through some of the most extreme, cold and icy periods the world has ever seen. The study is published in the journal Global Change Biology, published this week (12 October 2022).
The fossil record places the earliest animal life on Earth at 572–602 million years ago, just as the world came out of a huge ice age, whilst molecular studies suggest an earlier origin, up to 850 million years ago. If correct, this means that animals must have survived during a time influenced by multiple global ice ages, when the whole or large parts of the planet were encased in ice (snowball and slushball Earths), far bigger than any seen since. If animal life did arise before, or during, these extreme glacial periods it would have faced conditions like modern marine habitats found in Antarctica and the Arctic today, and required similar survival strategies.
read more www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/learning-about-the-first-animals-on-earth-from-life-at-the-poles/
