Are there any prehistoric creatures on Earth?

There is a type of tree that is known as a living fossil.

The oldest living creature on Earth.

The earliest organisms on Earth are supposed to be groups of cyanobacteria that evolved the ability to photosynthesize. They form large thin layers on the ocean floor, sometimes layered accumulations called stromatolites, and they are among the earliest fossils, dating back about 3.5 billion years. At the beginning of the Proterozoic, life on Earth was still confined to the oceans.

However, due to the continuous photosynthesis of algae and some bacteria, a large amount of oxygen is produced, and some eukaryotic organisms with true nuclei have begun to appear, such as primitive sponges and jellyfish-like organisms.

The first creatures to appear on Earth 600 million years ago were the Ediacaran fauna, and after testing, it was found that these creatures lived for hundreds of millions of years.

Before the emergence of human beings, there were creatures on the earth, and the age was very long, so what kind of creatures existed on the earth 600 million years ago, let's find out together.

01 The Ediacaran fauna, located in the Ediacara region of southern Australia, lived in the Precambrian period 100 million years ago with a large group of mollusced multicellular invertebrates. There are 31 species of lower invertebrates in 22 genera and 8 families, including coelenterates, arthropods and annelids. The 22nd International Geological Conference held in 1960 officially named the fossil group "Ediacaran Fauna".

02 The Ediacaran fauna preserves large fossils of multicellular organisms. Paleontologists peeled back the brown thin-bedded mudstone and found many fossilized animal impressions. What is amazing is that most of the animals in the Ediacaran fauna do not have hard bodies, such as jellyfish, worms, coral-like animals, etc.

By 100 million years ago, a large group of mollusked multicellular invertebrates (shellless metazoans) had finally reached their peak, and this was the emergence of the Ediacaran fauna.

03 The fossils of this fauna are found in the strata of the late Precambrian of Mount Ediacara in southern Australia, with a total of 31 species in 22 genera and 8 families, including cnidarians, annelids, arthropods, etc. It is characterized by the enlargement of the animal body, the increase of phyla, the complexity of the structure, and the variety of lifestyles. Moreover, the widespread distribution of fossils of this fauna around the world suggests that the fauna was the real ruler of the oceans at that time.

04 The Ediacaran biota contains three phyla, 22 genera, and 31 species of lower invertebrates. The three phyla are: Cnidarians, Annelids, and Arthropods.

Among them: there are 7 genera and 9 species of medusoid; There are 3 genera and 3 species of hydras; There are 3 genera and 3 species of sea gills (pennatulaceun) (corals); 2 genera and 2 species of Jellyfish; 5 species of 2 genera of polychaete cycloworms; Arthropods of 2 genera and 2 species. (The classification of the documents varies from version to version, and further research is required) and such fossils have been found all over the world since then.

05 The Ediacaran fauna is soft-bodied, mostly flat and radially symmetrical, and there are many types. Many of them are jellyfish-shaped discs, such as medusinites, tribrachidium, spinther, with curved grooves that radiate on the surface, or concentric ridges, or both, which can be called jellyfish, are extinct and have no such representatives. Some are leaf-shaped, or band-shaped, similar to modern sea pens, such as the fern-leafed rangea and charnia, known as petalonamae.

Then there are segmented polychaete worms, such as spriggina and dickinsonia; Some peculiarly seem to have 3 legs in **; Some have skulls and links. There are also early representatives of the Echinoderm phylum Hymerus that became extinct in the Early Carboniferous.