{"id":164090,"date":"2023-05-18T00:22:42","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T05:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/genetic-research-sheds-light-on-what-the-earliest-animals-looked-like"},"modified":"2023-05-18T00:22:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T05:22:42","slug":"genetic-research-sheds-light-on-what-the-earliest-animals-looked-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/genetic-research-sheds-light-on-what-the-earliest-animals-looked-like","title":{"rendered":"Genetic research sheds light on what the earliest animals looked like"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/genetic-research-sheds-light-on-what-the-earliest-animals-looked-like3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans more than half a billion years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Searching among today\u2019s most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, which spend their entire adult lives in one spot, filtering food from seawater; and comb jellies, voracious predators that oar their way through the world\u2019s oceans in search of food.<\/p>\n<p>In a new study published this week in the journal <i>Nature<\/i>, researchers use a novel approach based on chromosome structure to come up with a definitive answer: Comb jellies, or ctenophores (pronounced teen\u2019-a-fores), were the first lineage to branch off from the animal tree. Sponges were next, followed by the diversification of all other animals, including the lineage leading to humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans more than half a billion years ago. Searching among today\u2019s most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}