A 518-million-year-old worm resembles the ancestor of three significant subgroups of modern animals.
are each other's closest living relatives, according to morphological evidence and molecular studies that reconstruct evolutionary trees using amino acid sequences.Co-author Dr. Luke Parry from the University of Oxford added: “Wufengella belongs to a group of Cambrian fossils crucial for understanding how lophophorates evolved.
The paleontologists from the Universities of Bristol, Yunnan, Oxford, the Natural History Museum in London, and the Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris show that Wufengella is a complete, revealing the appearance of the long-sought-after wormy ancestor to lophophorates. Dr. Vinther said: “Biologists had long noted how brachiopods have multiple, paired body cavities, unique kidney structures, and bundles of bristles on their back as larvae. These similarities led them to notice how closely brachiopods resemble annelid worms.”