An international team of researchers from the US, China and the UK have discovered the earliest known cardiovascular system in fossilised remains of an extinct marine shrimp that lived over 520 million years ago. The finding sheds new light on the evolution of the body in the animal kingdom and shows that even the earliest creatures had internal systems that strongly resemble those found in their modern descendants.
"This is the first preserved vascular system that we know of," said Nicholas Strausfeld, a Regents' Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona's Department of Neuroscience.
The researchers can only speculate as to why the chemical reactions that occurred during the process of fossilisation allowed for this unusual and rare kind of preservation, and as to why only select tissues were preserved between a few rare and different specimens.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!