Our oldest ancestor discovered

[bushwacked]

Cambridge scientists recently discovered the vertebrate's oldest known ancestor, Pikaia gracilens, showing the early formation of a backbone. Here's the link for the full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...-sea-floor.html

Just thought it would be interesting for anyone who hasn't heard about it yet.

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
 Well, this is indeed interesting. Two nice science news in just two days, this is a good week to learn new things   .

 I wonder if there would find even older creatures with that feature that would eventually transform into the spine we all vertebrade creatures have, maybe it is the real first one. More studies are sure to be done   .

 Awesome.

[Kor]

This was a very interesting read.  Interesting how 2 discoveries were announced close together and this one such an old sort of creature from way in the past.

[Pangaea]

This article seems to me to be a bit misleading. Pikaia isn't a new discovery; it was first described in 1911, and classified as a chordate in 1979. The new study the article mentions has apparently just confirmed Pikaia to be a chordate. They're also mistaken in describing it as the oldest vertebrate relation: there are fossils of other early chordates that are both older and more vertebrate-like, such as Haikouichthys, which lived 530 million years ago, 25 million years before Pikaia. Not to mention that if these older chordates were more closely related to us than Pikaia was, then Pikaia itself couldn't possibly be our direct ancestor (though an earlier creature very much like it certainly was). On this note, pretty much any news article that crows about the discovery of some species' "ancestor" can be treated with skepticism; it's almost impossible to definitively draw a direct evolutionary line from one species to another, unless the two species lived very close together in time and there's evidence of a transition from one to the next (In such a case, the two species would have to be very closely related).

I suppose the study confirming Pikaia to be a chordate could have made for a good announcement for the 101st anniversary of Pikaia's discovery, or its 3rd schnappszahl anniversary as a chordate, but unfortunately the article didn't capitalize on that.

Oh well. Still better than the articles raving about  giant Triassic squid building self-portrait mosaics out of ichthyosaur skeletons.

P.S. Just to avert any potential misunderstandings, I intend no offense whatsoever to the member who posted the link to this article; I'm just nitpicking the article itself.