Mysterious mushroom-shaped sea creature defies classification

[n2doc]

By DEBORAH NETBURN

You've heard of a sea cucumber, but how about a sea mushroom? This week, scientists described a mushroom-shaped sea creature that may be in a phylum all its own.

Two species of the newly described animal were found along the bottom of the ocean as deep as 3,200 feet beneath the surface. One is a about 10 mm in length, the other is 17 mm; both are slightly smaller than a button mushroom.

The Danish research team that described the animal named it Dendrogamma, but in a paper published in PLOS One, they acknowledge that they are having trouble deciding exactly how to categorize it. It has features similar to animals in the phylum Ctenophora (the comb jellies and their relatives) and Cnidaria (sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish), but it doesn't fit neatly into either category.

"This is our central conundrum," said Jean Just of the University of Copenhagen, co-author of the paper. "They are at the base of the Tree of Life together with Cnidaria and Ctenophora, but they lack the defining characteristics of those two major Phylae."


more
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mushroom-shaped-animal-discovered-20140903-story.html

[Cleita]

1. Looks like some kind of worm to me, but I don't really know anything and

I studied Zoology fifty years ago. So much has been discovered and reclassified in that time.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. They're not bilateral

I think anything classified as a worm is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. Let's hope used condoms aren't gaining a life of their own.

[Crunchy Frog]

3. Maybe it's an Ediacaran holdover.

[defacto7]

4. Sea Cucumber and sea mushroom....

Salad!

[phantom power]

6. these days, can't we just settle ambiguities like this via dna?

[sakabatou]

8. Yes. I wonder what they'll have when sequencing it

[svpadgham]

7. Maybe it's one of those transitional forms

Creationists like to say don't exist.

[sakabatou]

9. "This isn't even my final form!"

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-isnt-even-my-final-form

[Nitram]

10. According to the article at the link...

...they collected 18 specimens, but preserved them improperly in 100% alcohol rather than 80%. So they dried out and the DNA is not viable for sequencing. They'll have to go out and net a few more to analyze the DNA.

[svpadgham]

11. At work I use 100% isopropanol

To precipitate DNA from suspension, and it doesn't destroy it.

[olegramps]

12. Not being picky, but isopropyl alcohol can be obtained in 99% concentration.

I am not trying to be a smart ass, but only to provide something that is interesting. A small amount of H20 will always be present after a series of distillations. It would be possible to get it to a very minute amount but not 100%. The first distillation process you would get something in the neighborhood of 80 some percent. Each subsequent distillation would result in further concentration, but never absolute. The alcohol used in DNA analysis is listed at 99%.

I just wanted to add that isopropyl alcohol is a azeotrope.

[Nitram]

14. I kinda doubted the 100% thing myself.

If alcohol wasn't the culprit, what do you all think might account for the loss of the specimens' DNA? A google search confirmed that alcohol most probably wasn't the culprit, as you pointed out.

[DirkGently]

13. Juvenile face huggers, obviously.

Sure, now they're "10 and 17mm," but those are the babies ...

[Nitram]

15. That has to be the most horrible way to die that there is.

With the tail around your throat just in case. You'd go mad before you died.