Humble sea sponge may be the common ancestor of all animal life

[WhiteTara]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0226/Humble-sea-sponge-may-be-the-common-ancestor-of-all-animal-life

Scientists estimate that there are about 8.7 million species of animals on Earth – give or take 1.3 million. But in the beginning there could be only one.

That animal was very likely the simple sea sponge, according to a study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Based on new genetic tests, the team of scientists can say with confidence that molecules produced by sea sponges have been found in 640-million-year-old rocks. These rocks significantly predate the Cambrian explosion, the period 540 million years ago in which most animal groups took over the planet, suggesting that sea sponges may have been the first animals.

The researchers write in the study, which was published Friday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that their testing provides “the oldest evidence for animal life.”

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. And some people haven't evolved much further than that.

[COLGATE4]

2. It should be the mascot of the Republicans! nt

[mike_c]

3. this has been zoological dogma for my entire career...

...and I'm close to retirement. Sponge choanocytes are morphologically identical and genetically similar to chanoflagellates in the opistokont protist lineage. Sponges have one foot in the colonial unicellular camp and the other in multicellularity, metaphorically speaking.

It's odd that this news, lately. It has been understood for many years.

[SCantiGOP]

5. Wait, it's not Adam and Eve?

My granddaddy is Spongebob?