These findings show that we are still overlooking things that are under our very noses. Even if they found an ancestor in the Burgess Shale, they would never know it. It is the life history and soft parts of the living animal that make it unique and these don't get directly recorded in the fossil record. Still, strange things like alternation of generation and alternate reproduction strategies are fairly common among animals as well as plants. I am not so sure, though, that phyla have not been overly split. As they fill in the gaps, many of the plethora of monotypic phyla will undoubtedly be merged. What with the great diversity of arthropoda and chordata alone, it seems that more than two phyla could be justified. Seems that modern taxonomists want to define a phylum as one whose ancestor had already differentiated by the Cambrian. But with only a living example, how can you establish that? Although the Zoologger is not technically a parasite, it seems to be almost as depended on its host for its survival. Degeneration is almost the rule for parasites so why not an obligate commensal?
This story reminds me of the find of a new order of insects in Southern Africa:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0328_0328_TVstickinsect.htmlI discovered this article fives years after my wife and I had already made a self-drive trip in Namibia. If I had known about "the gladiator" in the Brandeberg before our trip, I would have looked for it. My search image was on geckos and birds. We spent a whole afternoon hiking there on July 23, 1997. The photo on the cover of my music album was taken there. (Listen to some excerpts "for free" and tell me what you think):
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/pkmckneelyAt the 2007 annual meeting of the SVP in Austin, a dream of mine was fullfilled when I handed a copy of this album to the man who inspired it:
http://www.iziko.org.za/nh/research/karoo_palaeo/index.htmlThank you for the link Kadri.
- PabloMack
