(Photo: Linda Holland's amphioxus field work is conducted in Tampa, Florida. Shown are Aubrie O'Rourke (left) and Laura Beaster-Jones. Scripps Institution of Oceanogrpahy )
A worm-like marine animal is providing fresh clues about human evolution. KPBS Reporter Ed Joyce has more on the research by scientists at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Next time you wade into the ocean, you might be walking over a very distant relative that scientists are using to unlock human history.
The small, worm-like marine animal called amphioxus, also known as a lancelet, lives in shallow ocean waters off San Diego and throughout the world.
It spends most of its time burrowed in sand.
Scripps marine research biologist Linda Holland and her colleagues have deciphered and analyzed the genetic makeup of the creature.
Holland: This animal is very simple. But it is on the line leading to humans and we've longed used it as a stand-in for the ancestral vertebrate.
Holland says the lancelet is one of the closest living invertebrate relatives of humans.
That's why researchers are studying the tiny creature to answer fundamental questions about human evolution.
Holland: Where did humans come from, where did vertebrates come from. Because it's simple, it's very vertebrate-like. And it's gene networks, gene pathways and genome are very close to those of the human since it's not evolving very rapidly.
And we do have that in common.
Holland: Humans are evolving rather slowly as well.
Originally discovered in the 1700s, the animal appears fish-like with a small tail fin and medial fins, but no paired ones.
Holland says although the creature split from vertebrates more than 520 million years ago, its genome holds tantalizing clues about evolution.
Ed Joyce, KPBS News.
