{"id":167350,"date":"2023-07-11T20:24:27","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T01:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/a-500-million-year-old-sea-squirt-is-the-evolutionary-clue-we-need-to-understand-our-humble-beginnings"},"modified":"2023-07-11T20:24:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T01:24:27","slug":"a-500-million-year-old-sea-squirt-is-the-evolutionary-clue-we-need-to-understand-our-humble-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/a-500-million-year-old-sea-squirt-is-the-evolutionary-clue-we-need-to-understand-our-humble-beginnings","title":{"rendered":"A 500-million-year-old sea squirt is the evolutionary clue we need to understand our humble beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A rare, half-billion-year-old fossil gives us a clue to how a bizarre marine invertebrate can possibly be related to humans. In a study published on July 6 in the journal Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>, Harvard University researchers identified a prehistoric specimen in a collection at the Natural History Museum of Utah as a tunicate, or sea squirt. The preserved invertebrate, which was originally discovered in the rugged, desert-like landscape of the House Range in western Utah, can be used to understand evolution mysteries that go way back to the Cambrian explosion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are essentially no tunicate fossils in the entire fossil record. They\u2019ve got a 520-to 540-million year-long gap,\u201d says Karma Nanglu<\/a>, an invertebrate paleontologist at Harvard. \u201cThis fossil isthe first soft-tissue tunicate in, we would argue, the entire fossil record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sea squirts can be seen swaying on the ocean floor with its potato-like body and two chimney-like parts called siphons that are used to feed and expel water. While there are at least 3,000 different species today, the crayon-point-size organisms are generally unknown to people\u2014despite being our invertebrate cousins<\/a>, says Nanglu. Like humans, they belong to the chordates, which share five essential physical features during development or when fully grown. Most tunicates hatch as swimming, tadpole-like creatures, but eventually attach to the ocean floor and lead a sessile lifestyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rare, half-billion-year-old fossil gives us a clue to how a bizarre marine invertebrate can possibly be related to humans. In a study published on July 6 in the journal Nature Communications, Harvard University researchers identified a prehistoric specimen in a collection at the Natural History Museum of Utah as a tunicate, or sea squirt. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167350","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\/579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}