Offering insight into our planets ecological past, a study released Tuesday by researchers at Penn State University found that Earths animals were once a single giant creature before breaking apart roughly 175 million years ago. After reviewing extensive fossil records, we determined that a massive super-animal once roamed the planet, but began to fracture at some point during the Mesozoic era into separate life forms, said lead researcher Gary Albright, noting that if one looks at certain species closely, its possible to see how, for example, the giraffes neck fits together with the hippopotamuss underbelly, or the dolphins tail forms a perfect contour with the stingrays back. We believe this process started when tiny fissures began to form within the single mega-animal, leading to creatures breaking off and drifting away as smaller birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. In a continuation of this process, Albright stated that over the next million years, internal rifting is projected to cleave the platypus into a species of duck and a fairly large rodent. 