All of the earliest chordate fossils have been found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna, and include two species that are regarded as fish, which implies they are vertebrates.

According to genetic studies, divergence of primates from other mammals began and the earliest fossils appear in the Paleocene, around.

The earliest fossils that have been proposed as members of the hominin lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis dating from, and Orrorin tugenensis dating from and Ardipithecus kadabba dating to.

The earliest transitional fossils between H. ergaster / erectus and Archaic H. sapiens are from Africa such as Homo rhodesiensis, but seemingly transitional forms are also found at Dmanisi, Georgia.

The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 200, 000 years ago such as the Omo remains of Ethiopia, later fossils from Skhul in Israel and Southern Europe begin around 90, 000 years ago.

The earliest fossils that have been argued to belong to the human lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis ( 7 Ma ) and Orrorin tugenensis ( 6 Ma ), followed by Ardipithecus ( 5. 5 – 4. 4 Ma ), with species Ar.

The earliest record of hominids living in Europe has been found in the Spanish cave of Atapuerca ; fossils found there date to roughly 1. 2 million years ago.

The earliest lauraceous fossils are from to the early Cretaceous.

This makes it almost contemporary to the earliest eutherian fossils, which have been found in the same area.

The earliest fossils of multicellular life are found in the Ediacaran, including the earliest animals.

The earliest known fossils include pollen and fruits.

While earliest known fossils of anatomically modern humans date from around 195, 000 years ago, the matrilinear most recent common ancestor shared by all living humans ( dubbed Mitochondrial Eve ), is dated to about 120-150 thousand years ago.

Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards during the mid-Cretaceous period, and the earliest known fossils date to around 112 Ma ago.

The earliest known salamander fossils have been found in geological deposits of China and Kazakhstan, which have been dated to the middle Jurassic period, up to 164 million ( plus or minus 4 million ) years ago.

Darwin expected species to change slowly, but not at the same rate – some organisms such as Lingula were unchanged since the earliest fossils.

The earliest fossils of true tigers are known from Java, and are between 1. 6 and 1. 8 million years old.

This last estimate may conflict with the fossil record depending on whether the genus Kayentachelys, whose fossils date to around, is the earliest known member of Cryptodira or lies outside the least inclusive clade containing Cryptodira and Pleurodira.

The earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus Kenyapotamus in Africa, date to around.

They are among the earliest and most abundant of the small shelly fossils with mineralized skeletons, and therefore feature in the debate about why such skeletons first appeared in the Late Ediacaran.

The earliest known fossils of the great white shark are about 16 million years old.

The earliest evidence of herbivory by tetrapod organisms is seen in fossils of jawbones where dental occlusion ( process by which teeth from the upper jaw come in contact with those in the lower jaw ) is present.

The earliest known butterfly fossils date to the mid Eocene epoch, between 40 – 50 million years ago.

The earliest records of the study of this phenomenon are attributed to the philosopher Pythagoras in the 6th century BC.

The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on what is called the Prince's Sarcophagus, discovered at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, in the 1930s, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I ( 379-395 ).

The combined book Ezra-Nehemiah of the earliest Christian and Jewish period was known as Ezra and was probably attributed to him ; according to a rabbinic tradition, however, Nehemiah was the real author but was forbidden to claim authorship because of his bad habit of disparaging others.

The earliest recorded use of the terms Christianity ( Greek ) and Catholic ( Greek ), dates to this period, the 2nd century, attributed to Ignatius of Antioch c. 107.

The earliest Chinese document mentioning a crossbow is in scripts from the 4th – 3rd century BC attributed to the followers of Mozi.

The Zuo Zhuan, attributed to Zuo Qiuming in the 5th century BC, is the earliest Chinese work of narrative history and covers the period from 722 BCE to 468 BCE.

Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one.

Possibly the earliest and nearest approach to the discovery of the identity of lightning, and electricity from any other source, is to be attributed to the Arabs, who before the 15th century had the Arabic word for lightning ( raad ) applied to the electric ray.

Fossils at 20 million years ago include fragments attributed to Victoriapithecus, the earliest Old World Monkey.

The writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities.

The composition of his chamber opera Dido and Aeneas, which forms a very important landmark in the history of English dramatic music, has been attributed to this period, and its earliest production may well have predated the documented one of 1689.

Cryptography historian David Kahn titles him the " Father of Western Cryptography ", pointing to three significant advances in the field which can be attributed to Alberti: " the earliest Western exposition of cryptanalysis, the invention of polyalphabetic substitution, and the invention of enciphered code " ().

Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities and the Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD.

The Muratorian fragment, dated at between 170 and as late as the end of the 4th century ( according to the Anchor Bible Dictionary ), may be the earliest known New Testament canon attributed to mainstream Christianity.

Some of the earliest manifestations of Pan-Slavic thought within the Habsburg Monarchy have been attributed to Adam Franz Kollár and Pavel Jozef Šafárik.

The earliest known citation on the Internet is from 1986 on Usenet in the signature of a poster from Convex Computer Corporation as "' I think there is a world market for about five computers ' — Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson ( Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines ), 1943 ".

The cultivation of common millet as the earliest dry crop in East Asia has been attributed to its resistance to drought, and this has been suggested to have aided its spread.

Males were almost as likely to have positions of authority over both males and females, and the tradition of Matriarchy, where the highest ranking member was always a female, was not a special directive of the Demon Queen Lolth but rather had been a reality in Drow society since the earliest times attributed naturally to a few ability scores by the male gender being on average inferior, and particularly due to the ' wisdom ' ability rating being on average quite inferior to the females.

The first literary connection of Joseph of Arimathea with Britain had to wait for the ninth-century Life of Mary Magdalene attributed to Rabanus Maurus ( AD 766 – 856 ), Archbishop of Mainz ; however, the earliest authentic copy of the Maurus text is one housed in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.

Clement is the earliest pope to whom a text is attributed.

Perhaps the earliest recorded example is the prohibition of the use of alcohol under Islamic law ( Sharia ), which is usually attributed to passages in the Qur ' an dating from the 7th century.

Three brief ancient lives, the earliest attributed to Suetonius, another to an otherwise unknown Vacca, and the third anonymous and undated, along with references in Martial, Cassius Dio, Tacitus's Annals, and one of Statius's Silvae, allow for the reconstruction of a modest biography.

The earliest work directed toward standardizing an approach toward provision of mandatory and discretionary access controls ( MAC and DAC ) within a UNIX ( more precisely, POSIX ) computing environment can be attributed to the National Security Agency's Trusted UNIX ( TRUSIX ) Working Group, which met from 1987 to 1991 and published one Rainbow Book (# 020A ) and produced a formal model and associated evaluation evidence prototype (# 020B ) that was ultimately unpublished.

It featured in the earliest known history of Rome, which was attributed to Diocles of Peparethus.