I don't think height evolved. I think height is a characteristic of everything. At least everything we can see with our eyes, even if aided by a microscope. Maybe it's not a property of matter, but a characteristic of mass. Something like that? So everything has height. Things evolve with greater or lesser height, depending on how the matter is arranged. But it's not the height that evolves.
This is different from something like metabolism. Most matter doesn't metabolize at all. Mobility is another example. Intelligence is another.
If panpsychism is the answer, then consciousness didn't evolve. Things evolve with greater or lesser consciousness, depending on how the matter is arranged.
The reason the arrangement of matter is important to consciousness may be along the lines of IIT. The way it's arranged in a rock, there's not much information processing, so not much consciousness. More information processing in bacteria > worms > bats > humans. A thermostat? What about AI? Maybe there is a degree of consciousness. But they don't process as many kinds of information as we do, even if they can process the kind they do much better than we can. We have a whole lot of different kinds of information processing all the time. Our brain is always working on our biological functions; different kinds of unconscious information; different kinds of conscious information... Maybe the variety is important.
So we can't say when consciousness first appeared. And we don't have to wonder what possesses consciousness and what doesn't.