Life began on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, but the history of humans and other vertebrates accounts for only a fraction of this timescale. Chordates (a group that includes vertebrates) and echinoderms (like starfish ...
Evolution
Feb 23, 2023
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290
When creatures evolve, their genetic blueprints change. But within genetic material, fragments from a species' most ancient ancestors still lurk.
Evolution
Aug 29, 2022
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52
After four years of digging for fossils in a churchyard in York, Pennsylvania, amateur paleontologist Chris Haefner made an intriguing find. "I knew it was worth keeping," he said. He posted his discovery on Facebook.
Evolution
May 24, 2022
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1648
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered a fossil of the earliest starfish-like animal, which sheds light on the origins of the nimble-armed creature. The prototype starfish, which has features in common ...
Evolution
Jan 20, 2021
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2570
A new study by an international team of scientists has revealed the developmental and evolutionary mechanisms underlying the origin of a major phylum.
Evolution
Mar 19, 2020
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164
Scientists at The Ohio State University have discovered a new species that lived more than 500 million years ago—a form of ancient echinoderm that was ancestral to modern-day groups such as sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sea ...
Archaeology
May 2, 2019
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4
Just a few centimeters long, these animals thrived in the ocean roughly half a billion years ago. Because of their odd morphology, scientists have long struggled to find their branch on the tree of life.
Paleontology & Fossils
Feb 4, 2019
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8
A new high-definition genome sequence of the sea cucumber provides molecular insights into its ability to regenerate, according to a new study publishing 12 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Xiaojun Zhang, ...
Biotechnology
Oct 12, 2017
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446
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from the U.K. and the U.S. has identified the remains of a 430-million-year-old extinct echinoderm found in a fossil bed in Herefordshire, England. In their paper published in Proceedings ...
Scientists have used computer simulations to reconstruct feeding in the common ancestor shared between humans and starfish, which lived over half a billion years ago.
Archaeology
Oct 28, 2015
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31
