Jellyfish Have Existed Longer Than Dinosaurs

Jellyfish have been stinging people for thousands of years, but their time spent unsettling humans represents just a fraction of a fraction of how long they’ve actually been around. The aquatic invertebrates first appeared more than 500 million years ago, making them older than dinosaurs — about 250 million years older, in fact. They’ve also outlasted their prehistoric counterparts by about 65 million years, and one assumes they’ve spent much of that time gloating about being more adaptable than the fiercest creatures to ever roam the earth.

One species, the 4.5-millimeter Turritopsis dohrnii, can even reverse its life cycle and is therefore known as the immortal jellyfish because it could potentially never die of old age under perfect conditions. Because they’re invertebrates — and, despite their name, not actually fish — jellyfish fossils are incredibly rare. They do exist, though, and the oldest one on record was found in an area of Utah that used to be underwater and dates back some 500 million years.