Ancestor For All Animals Identified

Animal Ancestor

Jan. 27, 2009 — A sperm-looking creature called monosiga is the closest living surrogate to the ancestor of all animals, according to new research that also determined animal evolution may not always follow a trajectory from simple to complex.

Yet another find of the study, published in the latest PLoS Biology, is that Earth may have given rise to two distinct groups of animals: bilaterians — animals with bilateral symmetry, like humans — and non-bilaterians, which include corals, jelly fish, hydra, unusual, often poisonous, creatures known as cubozoans, and other organisms.

Free-living, unicellular organisms called choanoflagellates, however, could be on every person’s family tree, so long as it was a gigantic one.

Source: Discovery News

~ by DarkLight on January 29, 2009.