Old sponge in China, world’s eldest animal fossil

The newest old sponge

Okay, so the sponge is about the size of a piece of rice (the pic above is obviously magnified) but it does display “multiple independent characters of modern adult sponges” so it qualifies.  It has now been decided that living things have been on Earth for 600 million years. I think that even older things will be found so stay tuned!