Could scientists be wrong about where some animals fall into the tree of life? Some researchers in England think it is possible. They theorize that some primitive animals have been miss classified because of the way their fossils have been found. They believe that important information in missing because these animals are believed to only have soft tissue. They argue that that tissue could have decomposed long before a fossil could preserve the information. To prove their theory they decided to study the decomposition on some fish with similar characteristics.
No one was there 500 million years ago to say this is what happened, and without actual fossil records it will be difficult to prove. I think this is an interesting way of gathering information that might help to decode the fossils that did survive.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-vertebrate-evolution
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I think that this is very interesting because they dont know what the fossils could of looked like when they had first died. If they test this and find out that they have classified animals in the wrong categories, who knows what other mistakes they could have made with classifying other animals too.
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