• Question: what was the first 'modern' animal (an animal that can be seen today)

    Asked by anon-193461 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      There seems to be quite a few different answers for this when I had a look online – as personally I don’t know!
      I think this answer sounded pretty sensible to me, as it was believed in the early days earth was mostly covered by water so marine life would be one of the first animals:
      “There are several candidates for the oldest living animal species. The tadpole shrimp, Triops cancriformis, is believed to have existed since at least 220 million years ago, and possibly as much as 300 million. Queensland lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, fossils have been found dating back 100 million years. Although probably not existing as a single species, horseshoe crabs have been found dating back over 400 million years.”

      http://science.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_oldest_species_of_animal_still_in_existence

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      This was such a fun question to research! There are lots of different answers because we can’t be 100% sure on when specific species of animals ‘started’ – i.e. when they stopped becoming one species and became another.
      Take a look at these two links for some inspiration:
      https://mom.me/pets/17976-12-oldest-animal-species-earth/
      http://www.oldest.org/animals/species/

      Personally I think it would be something like a crab or a shark – what do you think?

    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Well technically all modern animals are different to their ancestors, that is all animals have evolved in some ways to adapt to their environment.
      But certainly many are still very similar to their ancient ancestors such as crocodiles and Tuatara (a reptile from New Zealand)
      My favourite is the Coelacanth (a fish) which is often termed the “living fossil” they were thought to have gone extinct 66 million year ago until living ones were discovered in the 1930’s.
      see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth

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