This was revealed by a recent study first animal on Earth they fought the most extreme climate. They are known to live in the cold polar seas for several periods.
The research team that published its findings in the journal Biology of global change This week talks about the amazing survival strategies of polar sea creatures. The earliest animals on Earth may have evolved earlier than older fossils were currently thought.
According to the fossil record, the first animals on Earth lived 572-602 million years ago, just as the world emerged from a great ice age. Meanwhile, molecular studies show an even older origin, up to 850 million years ago.
If the record is correct, the researchers believe the animals survived over the span of several global ice ages, when all or most of the Earth was still enclosed in ice.
The researchers suggest that if animal life had emerged before, or during this extreme glacial period, it would have faced conditions like the modern marine habitats found today in Antarctica and the Arctic and would have required similar survival strategies.
He further explained that, over millions of years, the expansion and contraction of ice sheets during cold and warm periods has driven the evolution of thousands of unique Antarctic plant and animal species. The same can be true of the evolution of life animal on earth.
Meanwhile, for humans, the polar regions seem the most hostile environment for life. It is the perfect place to study the past and the potential of life in the universes beyond our planet, such as on frozen moons such as Europe.
“This work highlights how some animals in the polar regions are highly adapted to life in and around ice,” said marine biologist and lead author of the study, Dr Huw Griffiths of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Daily scienceFriday (14/10/2022).
“And how much they can teach us about the evolution and survival of life in the past or even on other planets.”
Griffiths said the animals he was referring to could be animals that live under icebergs that lie at the bottom of the sea, sponges that live hundreds of kilometers under thick layers of floating ice, or organisms adapted to live in seawater that is colder than -2 ° C.
He said the cold and icy conditions helped encourage ocean circulation, brought oxygen to the depths of the ocean, and made these places suitable as habitats for animals at the time.
Dr. Rowan Whittle, BAS polar paleontologist and co-author of the study, said that in this case they were looking for the coldest and most extreme habitats on Earth to help understand the conditions early animals could have faced and how modern polar animals could cope with them. creatures evolved under that time.
Eventually, the researchers said, the group first animal on the now extinct Earth it may have experienced some of the most extreme, cold and icy times the world has ever seen.
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