Comments on: Grow a Backbone http://science.kqed.org/quest/2007/10/15/grow-a-backbone/ Explore science, nature and environment stories from Northern California and beyond with KQED’s multimedia series Thu, 24 May 2012 05:51:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Barry Starr http://science.kqed.org/quest/2007/10/15/grow-a-backbone/#comment-10963 Barry Starr Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:16:42 +0000 http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/2007/10/15/grow-a-backbone/#comment-10963 Lucky you..just your neighbors. I was seeing sea squirt in some of my more distant relatives! Good question and a really hard one to answer! There is a great link on Vendian animals at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/critters.html. This is helpful as it gives us some idea about how little we know about our 600-700 million year old sea squirt ancestor. Given the spotty fossil record of these beasts, the record of what came before is even spottier. Perhaps genomics can help us identify the last universal common ancestor, the beast we all descended from. Quest had a cool piece on a scientists who is studying genomes to reverse evolution to find what the DNA of our ancestors looked like (see http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/547 for the TV story). From http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/BioBookDiversity_7.html: Animals probably evolved from marine protists, although no group of protists has been identified from an at-best sketchy fossil record for early animals. Cells in primitive animals (sponges in particular) show similarities to collared choanoflagellates as well as pseudopod-producing amoeboid cells. Lucky you..just your neighbors. I was seeing sea squirt in some of my more distant relatives!

Good question and a really hard one to answer! There is a great link on Vendian animals at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/critters.html. This is helpful as it gives us some idea about how little we know about our 600-700 million year old sea squirt ancestor. Given the spotty fossil record of these beasts, the record of what came before is even spottier.

Perhaps genomics can help us identify the last universal common ancestor, the beast we all descended from. Quest had a cool piece on a scientists who is studying genomes to reverse evolution to find what the DNA of our ancestors looked like (see http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/547 for the TV story).

From http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/BioBookDiversity_7.html:

Animals probably evolved from marine protists, although no group of protists has been identified from an at-best sketchy fossil record for early animals. Cells in primitive animals (sponges in particular) show similarities to collared choanoflagellates as well as pseudopod-producing amoeboid cells.

]]> By: mihai andrei http://science.kqed.org/quest/2007/10/15/grow-a-backbone/#comment-10964 mihai andrei Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:21:08 +0000 http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/2007/10/15/grow-a-backbone/#comment-10964 well looking at some of my neighbours can definetly see a resemblance with the sea squirt :D but what did the sea squirt descend from? well looking at some of my neighbours can definetly see a resemblance with the sea squirt
:D

but what did the sea squirt descend from?

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