Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision.
An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.
This discovery will be published tomorrow (Thursday 30 June 2011) in the prestigious journal Nature.
The lead author is Associate Professor Michael Lee from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth & Environmental Sciences.
Compound Eyes
Modern insects and crustaceans have “compound eyes” consisting of hundreds or even …

Paleontologists have discovered that a group of remarkable ancient sea creatures existed for much longer and grew to much larger sizes than previously thought, thanks to extraordinarily well-preserved fossils discovered in Morocco.
The creatures, known as anomalocaridids, were already thought to be the largest animals of the Cambrian period, known for the “Cambrian Explosion” that saw the sudden appearance of all the major animal groups and the establishment of complex ecosystems about 540 to 500 million years ago. Fossils from this period suggested these marine predators grew to be about two …

Paleontologists led by Jianni Liu discovered a new animal ( which they describe as Walking cactus) during a 2006 excavation in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province. “Diania cactiformis – Walking cactus” was a 6cm long spiny animal lived during Cambrian age had a worm-like body with ten pairs of armored and likely jointed legs, resembling a cactus plant. The authors published their detail findings related to Diania cactiformis in recent issue of Nature journal.
This animal , a member of Lobopodia, a now-extinct group of animals resembling worms with legs, which may …

The international journal of Developmental biology features some very interesting articles ,coming mostly from Spanish scientists. Currently this issue can be accessed from ” IN PRESS ARTICLES ” , which includes articles from very eminent scientists like Antonio García-Bellido,Juan Pablo Couso, Gines Morata, Jaume Baguñà, Ernesto Sánchez-Herrero and many more . The highlight for me is the one written by Alain Ghysen about the contributions of Antonio García-Bellido to the field of developmental biology . Its in fact an interview of great man who pioneered developmental genetics, where …

The theory of Cambrian explosion states that most of the animal groups found today appeared for the first time some 545 million years ago within a short period of 5 to 10 million years. This is pretty well studied and amazing episode of Earth animal history , based on the fossil record indicates that diversity among animals forms evolved very rapidly during cambrian era . Recently researchers from scientists from UC Riverside, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and other institutions ) using the revolutionary new technology developed at The University …

The eye is considered to have developed at rather quick pace during the ‘Cambrian explosion’, 540 million years ago.Charles Drawin always wondered how natural selection could have led to the development of an organ as complex as the eye and with a common origin, in so many different kinds of animals. A group of Scientists led by Detlev Arendt, in EMBL,Germany have found how the primitive sea creature, zooplankton, respond to light that marks an early stage in the development of the eye. Larvae of marine invertebrates – worms, …

Pioneering work by Spemann and Mangold in early 1920′s on Salamanders ,where they transplanted a specific piece of embryonic tissue into another embryo resulting in a two headed Salamander. (71)