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Science 5 November 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5442, pp. 1064 - 1065
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5442.1064b
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News of the Week

PALEONTOLOGY:
Fossils Give Glimpse of Old Mother Lamprey

Carl Zimmer

Until now the oldest unambiguous vertebrate fossils dated back 475 million years, but this week Chinese and British paleontologists reported in Nature that they have found the fossils of 530-million-year-old vertebrates. And surprisingly, the fossils are not primitive, transitional forms as might be expected but are actually full-fledged vertebrates--more advanced, in fact, than some vertebrates alive today. As a result, paleontologists think fossils of even older vertebrates must be waiting to be discovered, perhaps in rocks dating from well before the so-called Cambrian explosion, when a huge diversity of animals appeared for the first time.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)