{"id":273,"date":"2014-08-22T20:11:51","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/?p=273"},"modified":"2014-08-22T20:13:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:13:51","slug":"hallucigenia-finally-comes-down-to-find-its-nearest-relative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/hallucigenia-finally-comes-down-to-find-its-nearest-relative\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallucigenia finally comes down to find it’s nearest relative"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo

A specimen photo of a Hallucigenia sparsa from the collections of the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution. Photo by C. Clark<\/p><\/div>\n

Hallucigenia sparsa, a strange creature that walked the seas 500 million years ago, may have finally found its family.<\/p>\n

With its dorsal spines and a head easily confused with its tail, this wormlike animal baffled scientists for nearly 40 years\u2014largely because no living animals seemed to be related to it.<\/p>\n

\"Velvet<\/a>

Velvet worm<\/p><\/div>\n

But Martin Smith, Junior Research Fellow, Department of Earth Science, and other researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown that Hallucigenia has something odd in common with today\u2019s velvet worms.<\/p>\n

Its claws, like velvet worms\u2019 jaws, are made up of cuticle layers stacked inside one another, they report online this week in Nature. That means Hallucigenia is likely the velvet worm\u2019s great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandmother.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h3>\n

http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/nature13576.html<\/p>\n

http:\/\/sciencefriday.com\/segment\/08\/22\/2014\/-evolutionary-misfit-finds-its-way-into-the-family-tree.html<\/p>\n

http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/sifter\/2014\/08\/bizarre-walking-worm-finds-its-place-in-evolutionary-tree<\/p>\n

Velvet worm image from http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Velvet_worm_rotated,_mirror.png<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hallucigenia sparsa, a strange creature that walked the seas 500 million years ago, may have finally found its family. With its dorsal spines and a head easily confused with its tail, this wormlike animal baffled scientists for nearly 40 years\u2014largely … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyoftheuniverse.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}