Acorn worms, also known as enteropneust (literally, ‘gut-breathing’) hemichordates, are marine invertebrates that share features with echinoderms and chordates. Together, these three phyla comprise ...

The mystery of chordate origins has endured for more than 150 years. Shortly after Darwin's On the Origin of Species, acorn worms were discovered to have chordate-like pharyngeal gill slits 1,2 and to ...

Lynn Margulis classified the Chaetognaths, known as arrow worms, as deuterostomes. Deuterostomy is characterized by several developmental characteristics including radial, indeterminate cleavage, a ...

Our oldest known living ancestor was called a deuterostome, which gave rise to a huge swathe of life including present-day starfish and sea squirts, has been discovered fossilised in ...

Deuterostomes constitute a superphylum of animals, which includes myriad groups, from humans to starfish. Previously discovered deuterostome fossils date back to about 520 million years. At 540 ...

Scientists have analyzed the genomes of two acorn worm species and found that approximately two-thirds of human genes have counterparts in the ancestors of these marine animals. These ancient genes, ...

How humans evolved from the very first animals over the last 600 million years is an endlessly fascinating question. When piecing together the many steps leading from our first simple animal ancestor ...

How humans evolved from the very first animals over the last 600 million years is an endlessly fascinating question. When piecing together the many steps leading from our first simple animal ancestor ...

An international research team led by Dr. ZHANG Huaqiao from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has used hundreds of new fossil specimens to ...

A microscopic bag-like sea creature with a really big mouth was human beings’ earliest known ancestor, according to a new study in Nature. The tiny sea dweller Saccorhytus was identified by scientists ...

Max Telford receives funding from the BBSRC, The Leverhulme Trust, the European Union Horizon 2020. He is affiliated with the Linnean Society. Paschalia Kapli receives funding from BBSRC. How humans ...