Page 2 - Darrin Schultz News Today

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.

An argument that has been raging among biologists for over a decade – whether comb jellies or sponges were the first group to split off from the common ancestor of all animals – has a new twist, thanks to an analysis of genetic patterns

A debate has been settled over the earliest animal ancestor—a free-swimming creature with a well-developed nervous system

A new study bolsters the idea that the first animals were surprisingly complex, perhaps equipped with muscles and a nervous system.

A study published by University of Vienna and MBARI researchers and their collaborators today in Nature provides new insights about one of the earliest points in animal evolution that happened more than 700 million years ago.

Surprisingly, genome comparisons have failed to resolve a major question in animal evolution: Which living animals are the descendants of the earliest animals to evolve in the worlds oceans? Scientists performed a detailed chromosomal analysis that comes down definitively in favor of comb jellies, or ctenophores, as the most recent common ancestor of all animals, or the sister taxa to all animals. Sponges evolved later.

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.

Ocean expeditions in 2021 added to a growing catalog of wild deep sea sightings and newly discovered species. Biologists emphasize humanity must better understand and protect this unique life, particularly as the prospects for mining rare metals in the deeps with tractor-like industrial equipment loom increasingly large.