…Animals.
"For billions of years, single-celled creatures had the planet to themselves, floating through the oceans in solitary bliss. Some microorganisms attempted multicellular arrangements, forming small sheets or filaments of cells. But these ventures hit dead ends. The single cell ruled the earth.
Then, more than 3 billion years after the appearance of microbes, life got more complicated. Cells organized themselves into new three-dimensional structures. They began to divide up the labor of life, so that some tissues were in charge of moving around, while others managed eating and digesting. They developed new ways for cells to communicate and share resources. These complex multicellular creatures were the first animals, and they were a major success. Soon afterward, roughly 540 million years ago, animal life erupted, diversifying into a kaleidoscope of forms in what's known as the Cambrian explosion. Prototypes for every animal body plan rapidly emerged, from sea snails to starfish, from insects to crustaceans. Every animal that has lived since then has been a variation on one of the themes that emerged during this time.
How did life make this spectacular leap from unicellular simplicity to multicellular complexity? Nicole King has been fascinated by this question since she began her career in biology. Fossils don't offer a clear answer: Molecular data indicate that the "Urmetazoan," the ancestor of all animals, first emerged somewhere between 600 and 800 million years ago, but the first unambiguous fossils of animal bodies don't show up until 580 million years ago. So King turned to choanoflagellates, microscopic aquatic creatures whose body type and genes place them right next to the base of the animal family tree. "Choanoflagellates are to my mind clearly the organism to look at if you're looking at animal origins," King said. In these organisms, which can live either as single cells or as multicellular colonies, she has found much of the molecular toolkit necessary to launch animal life. And to her surprise, she found that bacteria may have played a crucial role in ushering in this new era…"
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Amicalement
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