This remarkable, 525-million-year-old fossil from China preserves the soft parts of a kind of tube worm, of which usually only the hard tube survives. These worms are called "pterobranch hemichordates" and it is speculated that the central spine and nerve tube that defines our phylum, the Chordates, may have evolved from a structure like the central spine of this animal.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Galeaplumosus abilus
This remarkable, 525-million-year-old fossil from China preserves the soft parts of a kind of tube worm, of which usually only the hard tube survives. These worms are called "pterobranch hemichordates" and it is speculated that the central spine and nerve tube that defines our phylum, the Chordates, may have evolved from a structure like the central spine of this animal.
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