Discovery Provides New Perspective on Animal Evolution
Thursday, December 4, 2008 - 08:21
in Paleontology & Archaeology
A new discovery challenges one of the strongest arguments in favor of the idea that animals with bilateral symmetry--those, that like us have two halves that are roughly mirror images of each other--existed before their obvious appearance in the fossil record during the early Cambrian, some 542 million years ago. Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals.