A new species of worm wriggles into evolutionary history
Illustration: Danielle Dufault / Royal Ontario Museum
A new species of bristle worm, Kootenayscolex barbarensis, has been described for the first time from fossils found in the Marble Canyon site at the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. The results, published today in Current Biology, helps explain the origin of the head in annelids, a highly diverse group of animals that includes modern-day leeches and earthworms.