Our ancestor was a Sponge.

We all know that some people are called sponges. Well this discovery could be an explanation- it may be our earliest roots. Perhaps our connection with the first animal on earth has defined some humans today.

Let me explain. Bob Brain (cool name for a scientist) and Anthony Prave published a paper in the South African Journal of Science, announcing their amazing find. The amazing find occurred in The Etosha National Park, Namibia. 

A sponge like, multi-cellular creature called, Otavia antiqua, which lived some 750 to 550 million years ago. Our little predator was a puny 1-5mm in size, but still had the ability to 'eat' bacteria (First pic) and Algae (Second pic), which shared it's aquatic habitat, thus qualifying it as a predator. It is thought to have drawn water and it's 'prey' into it's gutless body through microscopic holes on it's exterior. After digestion, it expelled the waste product the same way, it is thought. 

Otavia lived in the earliest oceans, but probably in the quieter water environments like lagoons or pools. Earth was a different place then, there was considerably less oxygen than we enjoy and the temperatures were higher than today, therefor little O must have been a tough little guy. Further evidence of it's toughness is that it survived at least one Snowball Earth event. ( A Snowball Earth event is when the entire earth's surface was frozen and the seas iced up)

Brain (above) had dedicated his retirement to finding the earliest evidence of predation - or the earliest predators in other words. Prior to this search, he worked extensively with cave taphonomy (study of decaying organisms over time) and hominids. The predation thing is described as a hobby by Brain. 

Brain believes that our early ancestor set off an early 'evolutionary arms race' and this led to man dominating the planet as 'we have done it (predation) better than others' -Brain's words.