Fetid Fish Revise Understanding of Fossil Formation : Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

These data revealed a surprisingly consistent pattern of decomposition throughout time. This pattern shows that as these modern fish decayed, the most recently evolved features -- those characters that are most informative because they distinguish closely related animals within the same lineage -- rotted first. The last features to disappear were more ancient; those that are shared by all vertebrates, such the notochord.

These findings raise important questions regarding just how "primitive" the early ancestors of vertebrates were 500 million years ago.

via scienceblogs.com

Tagged evolution science
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