• Question: How could have plants evolved into animals.

    Asked by to Amelia, Izzy, Sarah on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sarah Harvey

      Sarah Harvey answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Well plants as we know them today didn’t evolve into animals. Using a technique called the molecular clock (which takes into account fossils as well as changes in DNA code), we can calculate that plants, animals and fungi last shared a common ancestor about 1500 million years ago!

      So basically both plants and animals evolved from single cellular microorganisms very gradually, for example the first step would be to join up with other cells and this process has been replicated in the lab starting with single celled organisms.

    • Photo: Isabel Webb

      Isabel Webb answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Plant and animals could never have evolved from one another. At some point many millions of years ago there was a common ancestor, but this would have been a very very long time ago and probably would resemble a single-celled bacteria more than it resembles you or a plant.

      Evolution is about finding a way to survive on the Earth. Different life strategies can succeed and so species evolve and change in different directions. Plants went in one direction – evolving photosynthetic ability and the ability to grow new leaves all the way through their lives. Animals went a different way, having a conscious brain and muscles. Some features evolved in both independently, like having multiple cells and vessels to carry nutrients around the body. We can use DNA and fossil records to predict how long ago common ancestors lived – and it was millions and millions of years ago.

    • Photo: Amelia Frizell-Armitage

      Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Plants did not evolve into animals. In fact both plants and animals evolved from the same single celled organism!

      Of this one group of organisms, some evolved the ability to photosynthesise and became plants, and the others that could not photosynthesise became animals. Plants would have evolved first because animals could not evolve without oxygen in the air, but once there was oxygen animals could start evolving too.

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