This Confusing Water Creature Could Be The Oldest Relative Of All Vertebrates
The strange creatures that raged in Earth’s oceans more than half a billion years ago appear to be the earliest vertebrate relatives we’ve found to date. They are called yunnanozoans, dating from the Early Cambrian about 518 million years ago. The cartilaginous features found in their fossil remains are comparable to those of modern vertebrates, paleontologists have found. This suggests that these animals were stem vertebrates, an extinct sister group to the original group of modern vertebrates. “The pharyngeal curvature is a key innovation that likely contributed to the evolution of the vertebrate jaw and braincase,” wrote the team led by Qingyi Tian of Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. “The pharyngeal skeletons of controversial Cambrian animals called yunnanozoans may contain the oldest fossil evidence limiting the early evolution of arches, but their correlation to vertebrates is debated. “By examining additional specimens in previously unexplored tec