Fossil reveals the origins of comb jellies

[Still Waters]

One of the ocean's little known carnivores has been allocated a new place in the evolutionary tree of life after scientists discovered its unmistakable resemblance with other sea-floor dwelling creatures.

Comb jellies occupy a pivotal place in the history of animal evolution with some arguing that they were among the first animals to evolve. Now an international team of palaeontologists have found fossil evidence that proves comb jellies are related to ancestors that sat on the sea floor with polyp-like tentacles.

As reported today in Current Biology, researchers from the University of Bristol, Yunnan University in China and London's Natural History Museum, compared a 520 million-year-old fossil with fossils of a similar skeletal structure and found that all evolved from the same ancestors.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-half-a-billion-year-old-fossil-reveals-jellies.html