Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Earliest known complex life-forms identified as animals

#1
C C Offline
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/...nown-today

EXCERPT: So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

[...] To find out what sort of animals Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms were, Hoyal Cuthill and Han ran a computer analysis that uses anatomical features to reconstruct evolutionary relationships. They found that Stromatoveris and the other Ediacaran organisms don’t belong to any living animal group or “phylum.” Instead, they cluster on their own branch in the animal evolutionary tree, between the sponges and complex animals with a digestive cavity like worms, mollusks, and vertebrates, the team reports today in Palaeontology. “This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants,” Hoyal Cuthill says.

“It looks very likely [the Ediacaran organisms] are animals,” says Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist [...] Geobiologist Simon Darroch [...] is also comfortable with the idea that the Ediacaran organisms were animals and that a few survived into the Cambrian.

MORE: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/...nown-today
Reply
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Research Multicellular life arose earlier + Virus that infected animals vital for embryo devel C C 3 123 Jan 26, 2024 02:24 AM
Last Post: Kornee
  Article Algae in Swedish lakes provide insights to how complex life on Earth developed C C 0 43 Apr 24, 2023 07:32 PM
Last Post: C C
  First animals developed complex ecosystems before the Cambrian explosion C C 0 65 May 18, 2022 05:59 PM
Last Post: C C
  Are alien life forms hiding in plain sight? C C 1 155 Sep 7, 2020 11:43 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  Tentacled microbe could be missing link between simple cells & complex life C C 0 251 Aug 9, 2019 03:04 PM
Last Post: C C
  Deep-space travel, colonization may rely on genetically engineered life forms C C 0 411 Jun 19, 2017 06:42 PM
Last Post: C C
  Ultimate "complex life" gene found in all orgs + Glowing bacteria could light town C C 0 525 Mar 3, 2016 07:02 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)