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Article: Jump-start for the vertebrates; new clues to how our ancestors got a head. (includes related article on conodonts)(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- February 3, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It's a long way from amphioxus, it's a long way to us.
It's a long way from amphioxus to the meanest human cuss.
It's good-bye to fins and gill slits, welcome lungs and hair.
It's a long, long way from amphioxus, but we all came from there.
- Philip Pope
The small, fishlike oddity called amphioxus has long inhabited a zoological twilight zone. It's a familiar stranger-neither complete outcast nor accepted member of the household. Like humans, amphioxus falls in the phylum Chordata. But because it lacks a backbone, the paper-clip-sized creature lies on the other side of the vertebrate line.
That dubious position, however, makes ...