Tuesday , March 19 2024
Discovery in Australia pushes back animal time line by 70 million years.

Princeton Team Discovers Earliest Animal Fossils, SpongeBob TinyPants

Princeton geoscientists believe they have discovered the oldest fossils of animal bodies ever found on earth: weird little tubey sponge-like creatures that lived 650 million years ago, pushing back the accepted “first animals” date by at least 70 million years.

Let’s take a look at the old time line, shall we?

Somewhere around 4.5 billion long-ass years ago, the earth accreted itself into rocky existence from the gas, dust, and Big Bang bits of the solar nebula (crap left over from the formation of the sun).

After lounging around on the cosmic couch for several hundred million years, Earth got it together enough for life to begin around 3.8 billion years ago – pretty darn quick in celestial time, actually.

Now, where these single-celled little spuds came from is open to endless speculation — God; a magical blend of water, organic chemicals, and electricity; stowaways on meteorites; Xenu; or the back of the refrigerator — but they proceeded to fart around in a most unimpressive evolutionary manner until one billion years ago, when the first multicellular life strutted (well, oozed) onto the scene.

So, think about this: the only life on earth for 2.8 billion years were stupid little specks, then you had a few hundred million years of multicellular nonsense, then, FINALLY, the first simple animals — likely SpongeBob TinyPants mentioned above — roused themselves just 650 million years ago.

All the important biological stuff has happened in a relative frenzy since then. Now my head hurts.

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

Check Also

Book Review: ‘Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean’ by Jonathan White

The ocean holds mystery, wonder, and amazement. In 'Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean' Jonathan White wants to show you just a taste of that.