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What was the first terrestrial animal?


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I wonder what the first terrestrial animal was and how it evolves from a marine creature. What kind of land was there (does plants already lives on earth?). Note that by "animal" I mean any creature that can be  considered to belong to the animal kingdom whatever it is (insects, worms, whatever...). Many answers on the web seems to mistake "animal" and "vertebrate". When did it emerge?

Edited by Olive
typo
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1 hour ago, Olive said:

Thank you! That seems to answer the question indeed. So it seems that was arthropods.

No problem. I thought it was interesting too, with it outlining the issues of and requirements for terrestrial adaptation.

Edited by StringJunky
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  • 10 months later...

I think its the ancestors of millipedes and centipedes, the earliest arachnids, and the ancestors of insects. They were established on land in the Silurian Period. Their diet was early plants, and each other.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/1/2019 at 8:31 PM, StringJunky said:

Nice link. +1.

One of the first imprints of sea animals strolling (or maybe hurrying) ashore is in so-called* Track Central, Kalbarri National Park, Australia.

Silurian sea scorpions of the genus Eurypterid seemed to follow in the footsteps of other arthropods, Kalbarria.

http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Trace-fossils-of-the-Tumblagooda-1667.aspx

It's by no means sure that Kalbarria were the first animals, but those are the first traces I know of.

Wonderful PBS documentary Australia's First Four Billion Years.

* Non-official name, AFAIK.

Edited by joigus
small addition
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