Since Charles Darwin’s view on natural selection and evolution, scientists have considered amphioxus to be an essential organism for understanding the origin of the vertebrates.
Amphioxus is part of a small group of creatures that Darwin characterized as ‘living fossils’ – species that are alive today but still are incredibly similar to their ancient fossilised ancestors – which are valuabe to scientists studying evolution and devolution. Even though it may appear that these organisms have been trapped in an evolutionary time warp, in fact their DNA has been exposed to as many mutations as that of any other organism.
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