Science News: A rare 1500 crore years old creature has been found during excavation in a limestone deposit in Germany. This creature had the ability to clone itself (by breaking body parts), which enabled it to produce identical offspring. After the discovery, scientists said that this creature, like a starfish, also had six arms. It had the ability to regenerate its body. Science Alert told that this excavation was done in 2018 under the supervision of researchers. This quarry was once a deep lagoon filled with coral grasslands and sponge beds.
Researchers have found the first species of this kind. They said that this is the only known specimen of the species of the type of breaking starfish, which they have named Ophiactis Hex. The organism doing cloning used to break some parts of its body and grow them again. Through this process, it used to produce genetically identical offspring. This process is also called fragmentation.
Dr. Ben Thuy, a paleontologist at the museum in the European country of Luxembourg, explains, ‘There is a good understanding of clonal fission in biology and ecology, but we do not know anything about the evolution and geological history of this organism.’ This discovery is important in itself because scientists do not have information about the exact time of the development of its first fission.
The 155 million year old fossil is preserved in such a way that all of its hook-shaped arms and the spines inside them are visible. It is named after the magical supercomputer in one of Terry Prasett’s Discworld novels, a machine capable of thinking unimaginable things.
Dr. Thuy and his team said in the study, “The process of separation into two parts and regrowth of the missing part of the body is known in the process of reproduction, but the process of freezing half of the body during reproduction is extremely rare. This specimen provides strong evidence that clonal fission in star-shaped echinoderms has deep evolutionary roots and is associated with life on one host and sixfold symmetry since the Jurassic.”
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FIRST PUBLISHED : May 20, 2024, 21:07 IST