Tag

Sea Sponge

All articles tagged with #sea sponge

science1 year ago•4 min saved

"550-Million-Year-Old Sea Sponge Fossil Unveils Evolutionary Link"

Researchers led by Shuhai Xiao at Virginia Tech have discovered a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling a 160 million-year gap in the fossil record and providing new insights into early animal evolution. The fossil suggests that early sponges lacked mineral skeletons, which explains their absence in older rocks and guides future fossil searches. This discovery challenges previous assumptions about the appearance and size of early sponges and offers a new perspective on the evolution of one of the earliest animals.

via SciTechDaily|

#ediacaran-period #evolution #fossil-discovery

science2 years ago•2 min saved

Discovery of the First Branch on the Tree of Life.

Scientists have used chromosomal analysis techniques to determine that the comb jelly was the first animal to branch off from the common ancestor of all animals on Earth, rather than the sea sponge. By comparing the placements of certain groups of genes in sponges and comb jellies to their closest single-cell non-animal relatives, researchers found that the comb jelly had the least reshuffling of genes on chromosomes, indicating that it split off from the original genome first. This discovery sheds light on the history of animal evolution and the mechanisms powering it.

via msnNOW|

#animal-evolution #chromosomal-analysis #comb-jelly