When did the first animal appear on Earth?

 

When did the first animal come about? According to some evolutionists, it goes back to the time before the Cambrian period.

However, that sponged fossil that Elizabeth Turner at the Laurentian University reported in a study in Nature, could be 890 million years old. (Even some evolutionists claimed that this was not so).

According to her, it was an Ediacaran sponge fossil.

Source:

Katherine Irving 2024 What was the first animal on Earth? | Live Science 21 August.

"500 million-year-old" larva fossil found with brain preserved

 

A scan of the Youti yuanshi larva fossil. Image courtesy of Yang Jie/Zhang Xiguang

When will evolutionists say that 500 million year old fossils do have their brain in view is an anomaly and millions of years do not count as fact?  

Researchers have found the fossil of worm-like creature that lived half a billion years ago. 

“The creature died while still in its early development, or larval stage, and belongs to a new species named Youti yuanshi, which combines the standard Chinese words "yòutǐ," meaning "larva," and "yuánshǐ," meaning "primitive," according to a new study published Wednesday (July 31) in the journal Nature. “

It was a Cambrian animal fossil with its brain intact.

"But larvae are so tiny and fragile, the chances of finding one fossilised are practically zero — or so I thought!" says Martin Smith, an associate professor in paleontology at Durham University.

Source:

Patrick Pester, 2024, ''My jaw just dropped': 500 million-year-old larva fossil found with brain preserved | Live Science 31 July.

The be earliest animal may actually be a seaweed

 

Image courtesy of Zhang Xiguangmage.  

Joel Kontinen

The Cambrian fossil  Protomelission  may actually be a seaweed. Scientist thought that 515-million-year-old fossil may actually be a seaweed and not a not a bryozoan.  

It is quite hard to find the years a fosill with years marked on it.  Some of them were made in Noah's Flood when the Earth was subdued with water.   

Source:

 Lesté-Lasserre,  Christa. 2023. Fossil thought to be earliest animal may actually be seaweed. New Scientist  8 March. 

Cambrian brain is bizarre

 

Image courtesy of Citron, CC BY-SA 3.0. 

Joel Kontinen
Arthropods are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton body and paired jointed appendages, They trace their supposed evolutionary origins back to the Cambrian Period, and there has been continued debate about the origin of the brain in this speciose group.

 A prevailing view has been that the euarthropod brain was partly composed of ganglia originating from the ventral nervous system. But Strausfield et al. describe the structure of the brain in a lobopodian from the Cambrian that is over 520 million years old, and found that instead the brainScience was already divided into three separate cerebral components even before the assumed evolution of the head. These findings support the conclusion that the cerebral and caudal nervous system evolved differently in this group.

However, God created the cerebral and caudal nervous system of these animals at once, in the beginning of time. 

Source:

Vignier , Sacha. 2022. Cambrian brain origin Science 25 November.

Tardigrates can hitch a ride on snails

 

Image courtesy of Teve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library/Alamy, .

Joel Kontinen

Sientist have tested whether tardigrades can travel on snails for a little while, on anails,Tthe authors Milena Roszkowska and Zofia Książkiewicz at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland decides to investigate.

They found out that the tardigrades hitched a ride on the snails.

Tardigrates are of living fossils. They were first reported in the Cambrian  strata “530 million years” ago, which means that evolutionists see them as one of the oldest kinds of living fossils.

Source:   

 Wilkins, Alex, 2022,  Tardigrades can hitch-hike on snails to travel longer distances New Scientist 14 April 

"500 million-year-old " fossils have stunningly preserved nervous systems

Image courtesy of Ortega-Hernández et al. 2022, Nature Communications. 

Joel Kontinen

Scientist have found nerve tissue within a small fossil. According to evolution, the creature lived in the Cambrian rock layers.  

It was called Mollisonia symmetrica.  Two of them were found.. One  of them is just 0.5 inches (13 millimeters) long and 0.1 inches (3.5 mm) wide at its widest point, the other is  0.3 inches (7.5 mm) long and 0.06 inches (1.7 mm) tall. 

The researcher say that it was just difficult to find so small creatures from around 500 million years ago. And they don’t know where to put the creature in the evolutionary tree. 

Source:

Lanese, Nicoletta. 2022. 500 million-year-old, bug-like fossils have stunningly preserved nervous systems, Live Science 28 January, 

Old Tardigrade found in amber

 

Image courtesy of Holly Sullivan.

Joel Kontinen .

Evolutionist think that they have found a fossil tardigrade that hails from 16 million years  ago, , They have discovered  it in amber.

Tardigrades are also known as water bears or moss piglets.  They are famous for their  survival skills.

As reported in the in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the newly discover tardigrate was found in theDominican Republic, they are taught to be from theMiocene epoch  (23 million to 5.3 million years ago9 and are very well prseserved

Tardigrates are of living fossils. They were first reported in the Cambrian  strata “530 million years” ago, which means that evolutionists see them as one of the oldest kinds of living fossils.

Source:

Lanese Nicolettatt. 2021, Tardigrade trapped in amber is a never-before-seen species, Live Science . 6 October,   

Tardigrates walk like insects 500,000 times their size

 

Image courtesy of  Jasmine Nirody. 

Joel Kontinen

Tardigradess are living fossils that were one of the animals that evolutionists believe were in the cambrian  strata “530 million years” ago, which means that evolutionists see them as one of the oldest kinds of living fossils.

They don’t have legs., so scientist did not know how they used their limbs.  Now they have found out.

“Tardigrades in the species hypsibius exemplaris revealed that their movements closely resembled locomotion in insects about 500,000 times their size, despite being separated by around 20 million years of evolution and belonging to a different phylum.”

That is, according to darwinists, but tardigradess use an intellectual design feature.

Source:

Weisberger, Mindy. 2021.  Why tiny tardigrades walk like insects 500,000 times their size Live Science 1 September.

For evolutionists, sponge is the oldest animal

 

Image courtesy of E.C. Turner.

Joel Kontinen 

According to evolutionists, the origin of  sponges, one of the first animals to evolve, have been found in rocks from 890 million years ago.

“It seems at first glance that this is a very radical paper,” says Elizabeth Turner at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, who made the discovery. However, she says the fossils she found fit with other evidence.

for years the oldest animals were from the Cambrian perIod, which bagan  which began 541 million years ago. 

However, recently some fossils   from the earlier Ediacaran period  (635 to 541 millions years ago have been identified as animals. There are also 660-million-year-old chemical traces that may be from sponges.

It seems that the quest for the first living creatures has begun, but according to the Bible, all craetures were created in the beginning, 

Source:

 Marshall, Michael, 2021,Sponge fossils suggest animals already existed 890 million years ago New Scientist  28 July.

Darwin Was Wrong About The Evolution Of Eyes

Image courtesy of Brigitte Schoenemann

Joel Kontinen

“An animal that lived 429 million years ago had compound eyes almost identical to those of modern insects like bees and dragonflies. The finding implies that the compound eye evolved very early in the history of animals.”

This is contrary to what Richard Dawkins says and what Charles Darwin said about them. 

“I am quite sure that its roots lie far back in the Precambrian somewhere,” says Brigitte Schoenemann at the University of Cologne in Germany. The Cambrian period, when many of the major animal groups appeared, began about 540 million years ago.

With Euan Clarkson at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, Schoenemann re-examined a fossil of a 1.2-centimetre-long animal called Aulacopleura koninckii. It was a trilobite: a marine animal a bit like a woodlouse, related to insects and shrimp.

Trilobites dominated the oceans for 300 million years, beginning about 520 million years ago. The last ones died out 252 million years ago. Studying trilobites offers clues to the origins of related groups like insects and crustaceans.

Schoenemann and Clarkson found that one A. koninckii specimen still had its left eye. It was a compound eye like those of modern insects, which contains many tiny receptors called ommatidia, each with light-sensitive cells and a lens to focus light. Each ommatidium contributes a single “pixel” to create a mosaic-like image.

The internal structures of its ommatidia were almost identical to those of modern insects. The only difference was that they weren’t quite as densely packed into the eye, probably reducing the amount of detail the animal could see. But to all intents and purposes, it was a modern compound eye, says Schoenemann.

The oldest known compound eye with preserved internal structures belonged to another trilobite, which lived in the early Cambrian over 500 million years ago. Schoenemann´s team described it in 2017. That eye was more primitive though. “There were no distinct lenses,” says Schoenemann. The ommatidia were topped with “a kind of translucent window, without any capacity of focusing”. Also, the eye only had about 100 ommatidia.

So, the evolution’s story of how the eye developed from a single organ to what we’re seeing today.

Source:

Marshall, Michael. 2020. Trilobites living 429 million years ago had eyes like modern insects New Scientist 13 August

Cambrian Shrimp Did Not Look Like Today’s Shrimp

Courtesy of Xiaodong Wang; Liu, Ortega-Hernández et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology (2020); (CC BY 4.0).



Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists have discovered a new shrimp like creature . The Cambrian creature hails from 518 million years ago, It is called Xiaocaris luoi, literally means "Luo's small shrimp.

It was just 2 centimetres or 0.8 inches long but it had weapons with what to attack they enemies or predators.

"This is a tiny animal that is nevertheless pretty well equipped for scavenging," study co-lead researcher Javier Ortega-Hernández, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, said.

The study was published online June 1 in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Source:

Geggel, Laura, 2020. Ancient Cambrian shrimp with dozens of dagger legs looked unlike anything alive today Live Science . 16 June.

A 520. Million- Year- Old “Naked” Creature

Courtesy of Qiang Ou.


Joel Kontinen


A 3 centimetre (1.1 inche) long Lenisambulatrix humboldti did not have any armour or claws.

This wormlike creature lived in the oceans some “520 million years ago”.

It’s founders compared it with the ferocious creature of the Cambrian.

But even today we have the naked mole rat, that gets animal lovers to get amazed at the creature.


Source:

Geggel, Laura, 2018, Without Claws or Armor, 520-Million-Year-Old 'Naked' Critter Was Likely a Loner. Live Science (20 September).

“Sea Monster” Fossil Shows Darwin-Defying Diversity in Cambrian Era Brains

Kerygmachela kierkegaardi might have looked like this. Image courtesy of Apokryltaros, CC BY 2.5.



Joel Kontinen

For Charles Darwin, the sudden appearance of complex animals in the Cambrian was a huge dilemma.

And since then, the situation has become even worse. In 2012 University of Bath evolutionary biologist Matthew Wills acknowledged that Cambrian fossils “can cause a real headache for evolutionary biologists.”

Cambrian creatures tend to be far too complex for evolution.

Some, like Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, have a very complex brain. Science reported that a shrimp-like creature dubbed Fuxianhuia protensa “presumably did a fair amount of thinking.”

We can also see Darwin-defying diversity in Cambrian creatures.

Kerygmachela kierkegaardi is a 25 cm (10 in.) long “sea monster” found in Greenland.

Assumed to be “520 million years” old, it is “a bizarre, oval-shaped water beast that had two long appendages on its head, 11 swimming flaps on each side and a skinny tail,” Live Science quotes palaeontologist Jakob Vinther as saying.

The researchers also found 15 fossilized brains, which differed considerably from other Cambrian Era brains by being slightly less complex:

“An anatomical analysis showed that K. kierkegaardi's brain innervated the creature's large eyes and the frontal appendages it used to grasp its tasty victims, the researchers said.”

Darwinians could never have expected to see such diversity in Cambrian animals.

Source:

Geggel, Laura. 2018. Fossilized Brains of Ancient 'Sea Monster' Discovered in Greenland. Live Science. (15 March).

Cambrian Shrimp Cared for its Offspring

Fuxianhuia protensa. Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, CC BY-SA 4.0.



Joel Kontinen

A Cambrian shrimp “dated” at 520 million years cared for its offspring, a recently discovered fossil shows.

As Darwinians want to see some evolution here. they prefer to call Fuxianhuia protensa a shrimp-like creature.

Evolution cannot explain parental care, which fits in well with the creation model.

It seems that God gave animal mothers the instinct to care for their young.

The assumed Cambrian Era was a big dilemma for Darwin.

Recent discoveries, including soft tissues, have made it an even bigger headache for evolutionists.


Source:

Fox-Skelly, Jasmin. 2018. Fossil shows a mother caring for her young 520 million years ago. New Scientist (5 March).

Weird Supercreature Found in Japan

The tardigrade looks a bit like a bear. Image courtesy of E. Schokraie, U. Warnken, A. Hotz-Wagenblatt, MA. Grohme, S. Hengherr, et al. Comparative proteome analysis of Milnesium tardigradum in early embryonic state versus adults in active and anhydrobiotic state. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45682 (2012). Creative Commons (CC BY 2.5).




Joel Kontinen

Tardigrades might be tiny – only 0.5 mm (0.020 in) long – but they are amazingly tough.

They are already found in the Cambrian strata “530 million years” ago, which means that evolutionists see them as one of the oldest kinds of living fossils.


Known as water bears for their somewhat ursine appearance, they seem to thrive in extreme conditions, both cold ( -272 °C or -458 °F) and hot (150 °C or 300 °F). Moreover, they can fast ten years without even taking in water, and still survive.

There’s more. A tardigrade found by Japanese scientists in the Antarctic in 1983 was defrosted and it gave birth after being frozen for 30 years.

Recently, a new tardigrade species was found in the parking lot of an apartment building in Japan. Dubbed Macrobiotus shonaicus, it is perhaps even weirder than others.

Live Science points out a bizarre trait in this sturdy creature:

“Perhaps the weirdest aspect of M. shonaicus, though, is its eggs. The spherical eggs are studded with miniscule, chalice-shaped protrusions, each of which is topped with a ring of delicate, noodle-like filaments. These features might help the egg attach to the surface where it is laid, [tardigrade expert Kazuharu] Arakawa said. “

The tardigrade’s traits speak of a Designer who skilfully made every living creature.

Source:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2018. An Even-Weirder-Than-Usual Tardigrade Just Turned Up in a Parking Lot. Live Science (28 February).

Cambrian Jellyfish Embryos Haven’t Evolved in “500 Million Years”

Image courtesy of the University of Bristol




Joel Kontinen

Microfossils known as Pseudooides (‘false eggs’) are the inspiration behind a story issued by the University of Bristol. Smaller than grains of sand, they nevertheless succeed in wrecking Darwinian thinking on how things are supposed to change:

“Everyone wants to be with their family for Christmas, but spare a thought for a group of orphan fossils that have been separated from their parents since the dawn of animal evolution, over half a billion years ago.”

Seen from a Darwinian perspective, the problem is that they haven’t changed since the Cambrian Era:

“Pseudooides fossils have a segmented middle like the embryos of segmented animals, such as insects, inspiring grand theories on how complex segmented animals may have evolved.

A team of paleontologists from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences and Peking University have now peered inside the Pseudooides embryos using X-rays and found features that link them to the adult stages of another fossil group.

It turns out that these adult stages were right under the scientists’ noses all along: they have been found long ago in the same rocks as Pseudooides.

Surprisingly, these long-lost family members are not complex segmented animals at all, but ancestors of modern jellyfish.”

“500 million” years is a long time for the oxymoron known as evolutionary stasis, i.e. absence of change.

Source:

University of Bristol. 2017. Fossil orphans reunited with their parents after half a billion years. (13 December).

Bryozoans, Tiny Living Fossils from the Cambrian, Are Still Very Much Alive

Bryozoans come in many shapes and sizes. Image courtesy of Rob Kool, CC BY-SA 1.0.




Joel Kontinen

According to the evolutionary story, the world has changed dramatically in "500 million years."

But scientists now know that some Cambrian animals have resisted change for aeons:

Recently, a tiny bryozoan was named after David Jablonski and Susan Kidwell, who both are University of Chicago researchers.

This creature, called Jablonskipora kidwellae, is assumed to be “105 million years” old.

A University of Chicago news release attempts to highlight the significance of the find:

“Lurking in oceans, rivers and lakes around the world are tiny, ancient animals known to few people. Bryozoans, tiny marine creatures that live in colonies, are “living fossils”—their lineage goes back to the time when multi-celled life was a newfangled concept. But until now, scientists were missing evidence of one important breakthrough that helped the bryozoans survive 500 million years as the world changed around them.”

This is obviously a problem for evolution, so they have to explain it away:

“Bryozoans never figured out a symbiotic partnership with photosynthetic bacteria, as coral did, so their evolution took a different turn. Each one in a colony is genetically identical, but they have specialized roles, like ants or bees. Their shelly apartment complexes house thousands of the creatures, which have soft bodies with tiny tentacles to catch nutrients.”

The Cambrian Era is still an enormous enigma for evolution. For some, it might be a real headache, as the creatures assigned to this period are far too complex and some Cambrian fossils are too well preserved to be that old, calling their assumed age into question.

Source:

Lerner, Louise. 2017. Fossil that fills missing evolutionary link named after UChicago professors UChicago News (16 November).

Artists Copy Perfectly Preserved Cambrian Clam

Space alien? Image courtesy of Dwergenpaartje, CC BY-SA 3.0.




Joel Kontinen

Few researchers would expect Cambrian creatures to be perfectly preserved. After all, they are assumed to be over “500 million years” old.

However, some specimens of Agnostus pisiformis were so well preserved that Mats E. Eriksson, a geology professor at Lund University, Sweden, says: "The incredible degree of preservational detail means that we can grasp the entire anatomy of the animal, which, in turn, reveals a lot about its ecology and mode of life."

Live Science suggests it looks like a space alien.

It takes great faith to believe that soft body parts could be preserved for half a billion years, but that is exactly what evolutionists have to believe in order to keep their faith.

Time and again we get to read about exceptionally well preserved Cambrian creatures, including a fossilised brain and a mass jellyfish graveyard.

Artists have now made a copy of A. pisiformis that was only a centimetre (0.4 inches) long.

Live Science explains why the tiny sea creature is important to evolution:

“The odd little critter is also useful to modern scientists as what's called an index fossil. Index fossils are fossils that appear in only a particular time period, so they're used to date layers of rock: If the fossils appear in a rock layer, there's no question about when that layer formed.”

There is a not-so-flattering name for this kind of reasoning that is a sure way of ensuing that no one will ever find a rabbit in Cambrian strata, and evolutionists can pretend that they’re doing science.

It’s called circular reasoning.

Image courtesy of Dwergenpaartje, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2017. 500-Million-Year-Old Creature Looks Like Space Alien in Re-Creation. Live Science. (18 September).

Cambrian Jellyfish Mass Grave in Death Valley Suggests Rapid Burial in Flood

It’s not easy to fossilize a creature like this. Image courtesy of Dan Hershman, CC BY 2.0.



Joel Kontinen

Jellyfish come in many shapes and sizes. They can display amazing navigation skills. Some live three kilometres below the ocean surface.

Evolutionists assume that “jellyfish-like creatures” were already swimming in the Pre-Cambrian seas, some “600 million years” ago.

Recently, Geological Magazine published a paper by Aaron Sappenfield of the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues, introducing a big enigma: a graveyard in the arid Death Valley with 13 jellyfish fossils, said to hail from “540 million years” ago.

The preservation of Cambrian fossils is always a miracle of sorts.

New Scientist sees something exceptional in the discovery:

“The jellyfish in the Cambrian seas seemed to have looked and behaved a lot like they do today. Sappenfield and his colleagues believe that the ancient jellyfish also lived near the shore, until tides or waves pushed them closer to the beach. When the tide receded the animals got stranded, just as modern jellyfish do.

But jellyfish washing up on today’s beaches have a poor chance of becoming fossils. Most are quickly torn to pieces by scavengers or curious children.”

A much more logical explanation would be the global flood of Noah’s day that has left marks all over the globe, including fossil graveyards and geological formations.

Source:

Abrusci, Agnese. 2017. Oldest mass animal stranding revealed in Death Valley fossils. New Scientist (26 July).