American scientists discovered the fossilized remains of legless invertebrate creatures. About informs TASS.
Worms are one of the vertebrate amphibian orders. Outwardly, they are almost indistinguishable from worms (but they have a skeleton) and look like eels (but without gills). They are few in number, but their work is extremely important for understanding the evolution of life. Scientists argue about the time of origin of the caecilians – genetic analysis of modern animals suggests that they formed during the Carboniferous or Permian period, 370-270 million years ago. The oldest remains, on the other hand, date back to 185 million years ago.
The discovery was made by a scientist from Virginia Tech University in Arizona. Located in the Petrified Forest National Park, the ancient rocks were formed at the end of the Triassic period and contain many traces of ancient life. Now, in these formations it was possible to find jaws and bone fragments of a previously unknown species of legless amphibian that got its name. Funcusvermis gilmorei In honor of the Ohio Players and the song “Funky worm” by the famous American paleontologist Ned Gilmour. According to scientists, the body length of these amphibians was only a few centimeters and their mass was very small.
These fossils are about 220 million years old, according to the researchers, which pushes the time of worms’ appearance back to about 35 million years in the past (if you rely only on fossil remains). Unlike modern legless amphibians, Funcusvermis gilmorei they looked more like frogs and salamanders, and their closest relatives were the so-called dissophorid temnospondyls, the extinct amphibians that were the putative ancestors of modern anurans.
opening Funcusvermis gilmorei states that dissophorid temnospondyls and their closest relatives are also ancestors of legless amphibians.
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Source: Gazeta
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