500MillionYearOld

A critical early stage of embryonic development has been linked to a virus that mixed with the ancestral DNA of complex organisms like ourselves more than 500 million years ago.Genetic material from endogenous retroviruses – which infected the earliest organisms on Earth, leaving markers in our DNA – is estimated to make up around 8 to 10 percent of the modern human genome.The newly discovered link between these viruses and embryo growth has implications for creating artificial embryos and working on regenerative…

Paleontologists have discovered a bizarre worm-like creature from the Cambrian Period that has features associated with three groups of living animals. Just a half-inch long and covered in bristles, the armored Wufengella is providing clues as to how ancient filter-feeders evolved.Wufengella is about 518 million years old, timing it toward the tail-end of the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion was a period of remarkable evolutionary diversification in animal life. Life on the seafloor particularly flourished:…

Stanleycaris hirpex. Credit: Sabrina Cappelli © Royal Ontario MuseumAn ancient radiodont predator with three eyes reveals key information about the evolution of the arthropod body plan.New research based on a cache of fossils that contains the brain and nervous system of a half-billion-year-old marine predator from the Burgess Shale called Stanleycaris has been revealed by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Belonging to an ancient, extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree called Radiodonta, Stanleycaris is…