animals
Explanation:
Animals.
The oldest fossils that give evidence to plants are from the Ordivician, fossilized plant spores that are 450 million years old. If you want whole plant fossils: in the Rhynie chert, a 410 million year old fossil bed along with algae, lichens, fungi and even arthropods very nice preserved primitive plants have been found. Those are plants with water-conducting cells and sporangia but without leaves. (for plants with flowers you have to wait till 200 million years ago and the first grasses take another 80 million years).
Animals came earlier. Sponges, which may seem and are very primitive as they lack organs, muscles and nerves are nevertheless multi-cellular true animals that reproduce sexually. They do so by buddying: sperm is released into the ocean and is sucked up by another sponge where it fertilizes a female egg. Sponges also show co-ordinated movement and have a simple immune system. But what distinguishes them clearly from plants is that they are not capable of making their own food, instead they capture tiny micro-organisms which they digest. They do so by pumping water in and out by the action of their flagella, tiny treads like whips. The oldest traces of sponges - a type of cholesterol biomarker, namely 24-isopropylcholestane - were found in rocks from the Cryogenian period, dated at 640 million years ago.
So the animals beat the plants by almost 200 million years.
