The First Animals Were Living Fractals (maybe)

Bob Novella












These creatures are called Rangeomorphs and they are now in my top 10 list
for the coolest animals ever.

The geologic period that saw them briefly flourish is called the Ediacaren which
lasted from around 635 to 541 million years ago. This period is somewhat
opaque to scientists since life-forms from that time had no easily fossilized
hard shells. This was because such structures hadnt even evolved yet.
Not only that, most of the structures we think of as kinda important for animals
hadnt evolved yet either. There were no legs or internal organs or nervous
systems or even mouthsanywhereon earth. Yet these creatures were
cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first
multicellular life and they were big, anywhere from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.
The rest of the world was composed of single-celled organisms so the
Rangeomorphs were pretty much at the top of the life heap.

You may think these buggers were plants considering they looked like plants
and had no motility. That would seem reasonable except for the fact that they
lived far too deep in the ocean for photosynthesis to do its magic. Eating
appears to have been a very passive affair for these creatures. Nutrients that
happened to wash over their membranes would be absorbed. This was
actually fairly efficient at this point in earths history. The oceans were truly a
nutrient-rich primordial soup, much more so than today. It wasnt chicken
noodle soup but all the organic carbon floating around made for tasty treats.
(not very tasty I guess since taste-buds hadnt evolved).

This couch-potato eating style appears to have been facilitated by the body
plan of the rangeomorphs. Surface area needs to be maximized if you can only
absorb food that happens to run into you. This is exactly what their fractal
shapes excelled at. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of
them look like the whole. They are therefore scale-invariant, meaning no
matter how close or far away you are, they look pretty much the same. These
shapes are found all over nature from coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs etc.
They also fill up space with incredible efficiency which is why lungs can be
relatively tiny yet have a surface area of 90 square meters.

So things were going well for the first animal-like creatures for millions of years
until there was an explosion.the Cambrian explosion. This milestone in the
fossil record records a period in time when evolution took a stab at a plethora
of different body plans (phyla) for its new and improved animals (animalia 2.0 if
you will). Many of these designs werent successful for long but many were
and, in fact, they account for almost all animal body designs that exist today.
These new animals kicked ass and they werent out of bubble-gum either. Not
only were they gobbling up the ocean nutrients but they also could hunt and
move and they had shiny new exoskeletons to back them up. The poor
rangeomorphs didnt stand a chance. Nutrient availability went into a steep
decline and these bio-terminators from the future could totally kick their asses
(and probably eat them as well). Bye bye rangeomorphs

Its still controversial exactly what rangeomorphs were. Most scientists think
they were animals but some still think they were more like algae or lichens. My
favorite other possibility is that they simply belong to a completely different
kingdom of life. I wonder what theyd be like today if the last 1/2 billion years
went their way.