{"id":82840,"date":"2018-09-20T15:42:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T22:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/worlds-oldest-animal-discovered-looks-weird"},"modified":"2018-09-20T15:42:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T22:42:27","slug":"worlds-oldest-animal-discovered-looks-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/worlds-oldest-animal-discovered-looks-weird","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s Oldest Animal Discovered, Looks Weird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/worlds-oldest-animal-discovered-looks-weird.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The oldest known animal in history has been discovered thanks to some well-preserved animal fat that\u2019s been sitting in northwest Russia for the past 558 million years. The find expands the confirmed existence of animals by three million years.<\/p>\n<p>The ancient animal is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucmp.berkeley.edu\/vendian\/dickinsonia.html\" phx-track-event=\"\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Dickinsonia<\/em><\/a>, which looks more like a creature from a sci-fi movie than something you\u2019d expect to run into on Earth. <em>Dickinsonia <\/em>were oval-shaped creatures spread flat like pancakes that could grow up to four and a half feet long. Previously, the oldest macroscopic animal in the geological record was the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/42242\" phx-track-event=\"\" target=\"_blank\">mollusc-like<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucmp.berkeley.edu\/vendian\/kimberella.html\" phx-track-event=\"\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Kimberella<\/em><\/a> from 555 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/oldest-animal-preserved-fat-dikinsonia?cmpid=TWITTER_TWITTER__20180920&linkId=57142743\">https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/oldest-animal-preserved-fat-dik...d=57142743<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The oldest known animal in history has been discovered thanks to some well-preserved animal fat that\u2019s been sitting in northwest Russia for the past 558 million years. The find expands the confirmed existence of animals by three million years. The ancient animal is a Dickinsonia, which looks more like a creature from a sci-fi movie [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1509],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}