What were the earliest vertebrates?
Vertebrate
{'answer_start': array([176]), 'answer_text': array(['Myllokunmingia'], dtype=object)}
Vertebrates originated about 525 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion, which saw the rise in organism diversity. The earliest known vertebrate is believed to be the Myllokunmingia.[1] Another early vertebrate is Haikouichthys ercaicunensis. Unlike the other fauna that dominated the Cambrian, these groups had the basic vertebrate body plan: a notochord, rudimentary vertebrae, and a well-defined head and tail.[24] All of these early vertebrates lacked jaws in the common sense and relied on filter feeding close to the seabed.[25] A vertebrate group of uncertain phylogeny, small-eel-like conodonts, are known from microfossils of their paired tooth segments from the late Cambrian to the end of the Triassic.[26]