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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

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

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 world's 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.

In two related studies, researchers describe huge chromosomal rearrangements and about 500 novel gene clusters in the octopus, squid, and cuttlefish genomes, which they say could help explain how they evolved their extraordinary brains.

Squid, octopus, and other cephalopods are genetic rulebreakers who have scrambled their genomes, perhaps allowing them to evolve their impressive smarts.