Human ancestors had tentacles – Moskovsky Komsomolets

proved by scientists from Moscow State University

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The biologists from the Moscow State University showed the example of the surviving brachiopods primitive invertebrates that the common ancestors of humans and almost all currently existing animals had developed nervous system and special tentacle by which they obtain food, said in an article published in the journal PLoS One.

Biologists from MSU shown by the example of the surviving primitive invertebrates brachiopods that the common ancestors of humans and almost all currently existing animals had developed nervous system and special tentacle with which they search for food, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS One.

“Given that the tentacles had two key taxon bilaterally symmetrical animals, it is logical to look the assumption that their general also had a limb. This means that the common ancestor of all vertebrates, including humans, have tentacles “, – says Elena Temereva of Moscow State Lomonosov University.

As the researchers explain, all existing multicellular beings can be divided into two large groups according to how their body is arranged – for two-sided and radially symmetric animals. Among the first belongs to the people and almost all other metazoans, except sponges, jellyfish and other cnidarians invertebrates.

The transition to two-way symmetry was an important stage in the evolution of life on Earth, which marked the transition from the free-and sedentary lifestyle to a crawl at the bottom of the primary ocean. It happened during the so-called Vendian age, even before the “Cambrian explosion”, and among academics there is no consensus that looked like a common ancestor of humans and other animals.

Most Western evolutionists and paleontologists suggest that this creature was arranged very simple – they did not have any bowel or abdominal cavity, and they had only a very primitive set of senses. In turn, the Russian biologists believe that this creature is a little different from what modern primitive invertebrate, possessing a complex nervous system and some semblance of limbs to move and capture food.

Temereva and her colleagues found further confirmation in favor of the second theory, examining how arranged one of the oldest and simplest bilaterally symmetrical creatures – Lingula (Lingula anatina), exist in its current form for 500 million years.

The distinguishing feature of these creatures, as well as many other primitive invertebrates are special tentacles peyote, a beam which surrounds their mouth. Scientists have long enough and long combined carriers like tentacles into a special group Lophophorata, however, major differences in the structure of DNA in various of its members have questioned its existence.

Having studied the structure and Lophophora located within them the nerve fibers, biologists from the Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences showed that their device and location of neurons in them as a whole corresponds to look like the tentacles of the invertebrate species whose genomes are not similar to DNA Lingula.

This fact is believed to be Russian biologist says that they have acquired these tentacles from a common ancestor, which can act, given the primitive invertebrates brachiopods, only common progenitor of all bilaterally symmetrical animals, and possessed a complex nervous system, and a set of tentacles.