image: A fossil trilobite from the Cambrian Sirius Passet fossil Lagerstätte of North Greenland. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Jakob Vinther (University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom).
A study of the diversity of animal body plans finds that the development of life until the Cambrian period included a wide range of designs and that the aggregates of forms seen in modern species are remnants of the initial range, with now-extinct branches of the animal kingdom representing the original diversity; the study suggests that animal biodiversity has expanded episodically to the present day, in contrast to theories of a Cambrian explosion, and an increasing repertoire of regulatory genes correlated with increasing diversity in forms.
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Article #18-10575: "Evolution of metazoan morphological disparity," by Bradley Deline et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Philip C. J. Donoghue, University of Bristol, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +44 117 3941209; e-mail: <Phil.Donoghue@bristol.ac.uk>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences