E-Mail IMAGE: Artist's reconstruction showing the life stages of the fossil lamprey Priscomyzon riniensis. It lived around 360 million years ago in a coastal lagoon in what is now South Africa. Clockwise... view more Credit: Kristen Tietjen A new study out of the University of Chicago, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Albany Museum challenges a long-held hypothesis that the blind, filter-feeding larvae of modern lampreys are a holdover from the distant past, resembling the ancestors of all living vertebrates, including ourselves. The new fossil discoveries indicate that ancient lamprey hatchlings more closely resembled modern adult lampreys, and were completely unlike their modern larvae counterparts. The results were published on March 10 in