Dev.SN

janrinok [soylentnews.org] writes:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [newscientist.com]:

Arthropods belong to an evolutionary branch – the ecdysozoa – that contains about half of all animal species, and the earliest fossil evidence of the group now dates back 550 million years

21 November 2024

3D laser scan of the specimen, Uncus dzaugisi

Mary L. Droser

A worm-like creature preserved in ancient rock has just been identified as the oldest known relative of insects, spiders and crustaceans.

The ecdysozoans are a group of invertebrate animals with a tough outer coating, or cuticle, that they moult as they grow. It is clearly a successful evolutionary strategy, because today the group contains millions of species. “Some estimates suggest that about half of all known animal species are ecdysozoans,” says Ian Hughes [harvard.edu] at Harvard University. All arthropods – including insects [newscientist.com] and spiders [newscientist.com] – belong to the group, and so do …

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