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Jellyfish are older than dinosaurs

Can you imagine a creature that has lived on Earth longer than dinosaurs? Not a lion, not an elephant, not even a crocodile. It's a small, transparent jellyfish! The first jellyfish appeared in the oceans over 600 million years ago - long before the first dinosaurs, the first trees, and the first fish.

The jellyfish is a true wonder of nature. It has no brain. No heart. No bones, not even blood. Its body on the 95% is made up of water—it's almost like a glass of water with a little jellyfish inside. If you throw a jellyfish onto the shore, it will dry up and disappear, because there's almost nothing there but water.

How does it live without a brain? A jellyfish has a simple «nerve ring» — a thin mesh of nerves around its umbrella. It controls its movements: the umbrella contracts — the jellyfish swims forward, like a small parachute in reverse. The largest jellyfish in the world — the Arctic lion’s mane — has an umbrella up to 2 meters long and tentacles 30 meters long. That’s longer than a blue whale!

And some jellyfish glow in the dark, like tiny underwater flashlights. It was thanks to one luminous jellyfish that scientists figured out how our DNA works and received the Nobel Prize.

Look at a jellyfish and think: this transparent beauty saw the first fish emerge, the dinosaurs go extinct, and amphibians emerge onto land. She is the living history of the Earth, drifting through time with the currents.