Today in the Boston Globe, I write about how scientists are revising their understanding of the evolution of animals, thanks to more DNA and more weird animals. My favorite quote comes from biologist Mark Pallen, who says that the human genome would have been worthless without understanding how humans are related to other animals.
Unfortunately, this research has been subject to some poor reporting, and to some distortions from creationists. Ryan Gregory and Troy Britain set them straight, respectively.
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That's a beautiful graphic in the Globe.
Here's what ads Google puts right below it:
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These people spam everything relating to evolution. What's up?
EXCELLENT!
Needless to say, another great article. I did, however, find a small error/misleading statement.
>>The next oldest lineages produced a group of species that included jellyfish and comb jellies, known as ctenophores.
Jellyfish and comb jellies belong to two different phyla, with the jellifish belonging to Cnidaria and the comb jellies belonging to ctenophora.
Celebrate the second most basal metazoans! Its Coral Week at Deep Sea News.
There's a little bit of us in them. Or is it the other way around?
IMHO the tree is full of long-branch attraction. The position of the ctenophores is probably spurious.
That said, the ctenophores are massively underresearched anyway!