500-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals a Worm Covered in Bristles
’s morphology confirms that animals like it had rows of plates on their backs, but it also connects the three extant groups of filter-feeders.isn’t a brachiopod, a bryozoan, or a phoronid. All these animals had lophophores, a horseshoe-shaped organ crucial for filtering water. The petiteis a camenellan tommotiid, the former meaning it had a series of bristles along its body and the latter meaning it is evolutionarily connected to brachiopods and bryozoans.
“The fossil isn’t a direct ancestor but more like their ancient cousin,” said Luke Parry, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the research, in an email. “It tells us what features were present in the ancestor of lophophorates, in the same way thatSince modern-day lophophorates are affixed to the seafloor,shows that the animal group evolved from a mobile organism.
Because the Cambrian explosion saw so much diversification in so short a time, it can be difficult for paleontologists to know how animals evolved from each other, and what their common ancestors may have looked like.provides answers for animals with lophophores. And though its kind is no longer around, the descendants of its cousins are. Under the sea, relics of the Cambrian are still filter-feeding their way through life.
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