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It would appear paleontologists have finally figured out how to interpret one of the stranger Cambrian era creatures. How strange? Well, here's an artist's conception based on many fossil specimens ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/64832-ancient-starfish-relative-mystery-solved.html
480-Million-Year-Old Mystery Creature Finally Identified from Its Preserved Guts
For the past 150 years, scientists have hotly debated a mysterious creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. And now, with the discovery of stunningly detailed fossils in Morocco, paleontologists have finally ID'd the bizarre life-forms.
The creatures, known as stylophorans, looked like flattened and armored wall decorations that had a long arm poking off their sides. But while it was previously unclear where they fit in the animal family tree, the new study revealed that they are echinoderms, the ancient relatives of modern animals such as sea urchins, starfish, brittle stars, sea lilies, feather stars and sea cucumbers.
The finding was made possible thanks to fossils with "unequivocal evidence for exceptionally preserved soft parts, both in the appendage and in the body of stylophorans," said study lead researcher Bertrand Lefebvre, a National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher at the Laboratory of Geology of Lyon in France. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/64832-ancient-starfish-relative-mystery-solved.html