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Science News: A rare creature 15 billion years old has been found during excavation in a limestone deposit in Germany. This creature had the ability to clone itself (by breaking body parts), thereby producing identical children. After the discovery, scientists said that like the starfish, this creature also had six arms. It had the ability to revive one’s body. Science Alert said that this excavation was done in 2018 under the supervision of researchers. This mine was once a deep lagoon filled with coral meadows and sponge beds.
Researchers have found the first species of this type. He said that this is the only known specimen of the type of breaking starfish, which he named Ophiactis Hex. Cloning was done by breaking off parts of the organism’s body and re-growing them. Through this process he was able to produce genetically identical children. This process is also called fragmentation.
Dr. Ben Thuy, a paleontologist at the Museum of Luxembourg in the European country, tells about it, ‘There is good information about clonal fragmentation in biology and ecology, but we do not know anything about the evolution and geological history of this organism. Not there.’ This discovery is important in itself because scientists do not have information about the exact time of development of its first fission.
This 1500 million year old fossil has been preserved in such a way that all its hook-shaped arms and the spines inside them are visible. It is named after the magical supercomputer in one of Terry Pressett’s Discworld novels, a machine capable of thinking unimaginable things.
Dr. Thuy and his team said in the study, the process of reproduction involves separation into two parts and the process of re-growing the missing part of the body, but the process of freezing half of the body during reproduction. It is extremely rare. This specimen provides strong evidence that clonal fragmentation in star-shaped echinoderms has deep evolutionary roots and is linked to life on a single host and six-fold symmetry since the Jurassic.
Tag: science, science news
first published : May 20, 2024, 9:07 pm IST
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