Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

The Developmental Evolution of Bodyplans - The Fossil Evidence

Rapid origination of metazoan bodyplans occurred during the Late Neoproterozoic and earliest Cambrian was associated with a series of innovations in control mechanisms of devilment, such as the Hoxgene cluster, as is demonstrated by fossil evidence, developmental biology and metazoan phylogeny. The protostome-deuterostome branching, independent higher metazoan clade diversification, important developmental control system diversification and formation of higher metazoan bodyplans were evidently included among changes that occurred in the interval 560-535 Ma. According to the authors¹ comparative palaeontological and developmental studies will allow further tests of alternative models for the sequence of these events, which will show the association between developmental and bodyplan evolution.

Sources and further reading

1. Valentine, J. W., D. H. Erwin, and D. Jablonski. "Developmental Evolution of Bodyplans: The Fossil Evidence" "Dev. Biol." 373-81, 1996.