Two modern comb jelliesWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, STEVE JURVETSON
A 580-million-year-old fossil suggests that evolution of bilateral symmetry may be simpler than previously thought, Nature reports. The fossil, an eight-armed swirl named Eoandromeda after the galaxy Andromeda, is believed by researchers to be the ancestor of modern comb jellies, which populate oceans worldwide and swim using rows of cilia, or combs. On the established tree of animal evolution, comb jellies branch off after the cnidarians, other jelly-filled creatures like sea anemones and jellyfish.
Like vertebrates, cnidarians exhibit bilateral or biradial symmetry—meaning they can be bisected into two mirror images. The ancestors of comb jellies, however, were not. The current version of the animal tree, which has the comb jelly lineage arising after bilateral cnidarians but before bilateral flatworms suggests that bilateral symmetry must have ...
