New Phylum!

[n2doc]

Zoologger: The most bizarre life story on Earth?

14:09 28 April 2010 by Michael Marshall


Species: Symbion pandora

Habitat: In the eastern Atlantic Ocean – on the mouthparts of Norway lobsters (also known as Dublin Bay prawns or langoustines)

There's no question that discovering a new species is very cool. But how about discovering a new phylum?

A phylum is a broad division in taxonomy: all vertebrates, for example, from fish to humans, are in the chordate phylum. In 1995, Peter Funch and Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen, both then at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, discovered an animal so unlike any other that a new phylum – Cycliophora – had to be created just for it.

Symbion pandora, as they called the new creature, is a tiny animal with a complex body and a bizarre life cycle. It still baffles biologists 15 years after it was formally described, and the latest work on its nervous system isn't helping matters.

more

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18834-zoologger-the-most-bizarre-life-story-on-earth.html

[DeSwiss]

1. Fascinating!

- K&R

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Truly cool!!!

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Phylum and forget 'em, I say.

[WheelWalker]

4. Excuse me....I have to go brush my teeth. n/t

[shireen]

5. mind-blowing ...

it's marvelous ... the diversity of life on Earth. Evolution produces some amazing critters!
:wow: