Fossil Mystery Solved

A strange, cone-shape creature that lived on the ocean floor 500 million years ago has been assigned to the tree of life.

15:54 13 January 2017

A strange animal, discovered 175 years ago, has been assigned to the tree of life, solving a long held mystery. It has tentacles for feeding and appendages that acted as feet.

 

Joseph Moysiuk, of the University of Toronto, made the discovery, said: "Hyoliths are small cone-shaped sea dwelling animals. They are known from all around the world, mostly from fossils of their shells,"

 

"They appear in the fossil record about 530 million years ago and survived until about 250 million years ago.

 

"But the question of where hyoliths actually fit into the tree of life has been somewhat of a mystery for the last 175 years, since they were first described."

 

His research, published in the journal Nature, suggests that the animal is more closely related to a different group of shell-bearing organisms, known as lophophorata, which includes brachipods (lamp shells).

 

"Being able to place them on the tree of life, it solves this long paleontological mystery about what these creatures are," said Joseph Moysiuk.

 

"We have been able to discover some new features of a very old group of fossil animals, and it's allowed us to reveal the evolutionary history of this group of animals and where exactly they sit on the tree of life."