• Question: how did the earth evolve its creatures and wildlife

    Asked by 477cmte26 to Helena on 17 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Helena Quilter

      Helena Quilter answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      That’s a great question! It’s amazing how many different species of plants and animals there are!

      The very first life on Earth was very simple – it only had one cell! We don’t really know how that very first lifeforms came about. We know the Earth is about 4 and a half million years old and the earliest life was about 3 and a half million years ago so it’s taken a long time to evolve to be how it is today!

      Those early, really simple life forms learnt to copy themselves and gradually became a bit more complicated. They kept evolving over millions of years with natural selection – that means that the life forms that were well suited to their environment survived but others didn’t. For example giraffes evolved to have very long necks so they could reach leaves that were high up, and tigers evolved to have stripes to camouflage them and sharp teeth and claws to catch their prey!

      That evolution and natural selection eventually led to all of the different living things that we see on Earth today! ?????????????

      There’s cool image that shows you how animals evolved from different species here:

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