what were the first multi-cellular animals on earth
Multicellular organism Multicellularity has evolved independently at least 46 times in eukaryotes,[5][6] and also in some prokaryotes, like cyanobacteria, myxobacteria, actinomycetes, Magnetoglobus multicellularis or Methanosarcina. However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six eukaryotic groups: animals, fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and land plants.[7] It evolved repeatedly for Chloroplastida (green algae and land plants), once or twice for animals, once for brown algae, three times in the fungi (chytrids, ascomycetes and basidiomycetes)[8] and perhaps several times for slime molds and red algae.[9] The first evidence of multicellularity is from cyanobacteria-like organisms that lived 3–3.5 billion years ago.[5] To reproduce, true multicellular organisms must solve the problem of regenerating a whole organism from germ cells (i.e. sperm and egg cells), an issue that is studied in evolutionary developmental biology. Animals have evolved a considerable diversity of cell types in a multicellular body (100–150 different cell types), compared with 10–20 in plants and fungi.[10]