Newly-discovered ‘ring of teeth’ helps determine what common ancestor of moulting animals looked lik

[n2doc]

?

A new analysis of one of the most bizarre-looking fossils ever discovered has definitively sorted its head from its tail, and turned up a previously unknown ring of teeth, which could help answer some of the questions around the early development of moulting animals.

A new study of an otherworldly creature from half a billion years ago – a worm-like animal with legs, spikes and a head difficult to distinguish from its tail – has definitively identified its head for the first time, and revealed a previously unknown ring of teeth and a pair of simple eyes. The results, published today in the journal Nature, have helped scientists reconstruct what the common ancestor of everything from tiny roundworms to huge lobsters might have looked like.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto have found that the creature, known as Hallucigenia due to its strange appearance, had a throat lined with needle-like teeth, a previously unidentified feature which could help connect the dots between it, modern velvet worms and arthropods – the group which contains modern insects, spiders and crustaceans.

Arthropods, velvet worms (onychophorans) and water bears (tardigrades) all belong to the massive group of animals that moult, known as ecdysozoans. Though Hallucigenia is not the common ancestor of all ecdysozoans, it is a precursor to velvet worms. Finding this mouth arrangement in Hallucigenia helped scientists determine that velvet worms originally had the same configuration – but it was eventually lost through evolution.

- See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/newly-discovered-ring-of-teeth-helps-determine-what-common-ancestor-of-moulting-animals-looked-like#sthash.CuM0abvw.rGMOpccK.dpuf

[annabanana]

1. neat stuff!. . . . n/t

[hunter]

2. What sort of creature was around then thinking, "Nope, won't eat that..."

Or was it more the physical reaction of a soft creature thinking "Ouch!" and retreating after it tried to eat it?

Were there any creatures that learned to avoid these Hallucigenia without actually getting spiked first?

Spikes are a common feature in the evolution of many sorts of life forms, plants and vertebrates too.

It's great fun to examine these exotic environments of the past.

This planet earth is an amazing place, and time is immensely deep. The universe itself is unimaginably large.

I don't understand people who don't respect and marvel in life's diversity. Some of the "young earth creationists" and fundamentalists are among the very worst offenders. You'd think they would respect and cherish their "God's Creation" but they are right up there front and center vandalizing and dismissing the greatest miracles of "their Father" for the man-made fantasies of money, wealth, political power, insanely boring imaginary "heavens," and many actual living hells for their fellow mankind.

Imagine there's no heaven...