Earliest life on this planet looked like tennis and soccer balls. Images show round ball-like creatures. One type has the curved line around it like a tennis ball. Another has five sides shapes around its surface like a soccer ball.
At first the lifeforms were believed to be giant bacteria. Currently the verdict is they are metazoan embryos. They could ultimately be found to be protists such as fungi, algae and diatoms.
Though they are the earliest kind of life found, the find at this particular site in China is just by chance. Different life could have developed elsewhere. Two animals have also been found at the site that lived during the "Snowball Earth" period. One of the animals could be the first instance of a bilateral, life with a symmetrical body.
China and Australia were once joined together on the supercontinent of Gondwana. Fossils in the Flinders Range of Australia also claim the "ticket" for the oldest known form of life.
Paleontology