The Lives of Weird 500-Million-Year-Old Creatures Revealed
By Simon Darroch, Vanderbilt University and Imran Rahman, University of Oxford | June 25, 2017 09:08am ET
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Paleontologists like us are used to working with fossils that would seem bizarre to many biologists accustomed to living creatures. And as we go farther back in Earth's history, the fossils start to look even weirder. They lack tails, legs, skeletons, eyes…any characteristics that would help us understand where these organisms fit in the tree of life. Under these circumstances, the science of paleontology becomes significantly harder.
