'walking Cactus' Is Arthropods' Lost Relative

[Moontanman]

'Walking cactus' is arthropods' lost relative

 

Fossil find sheds light on how jointed legs of insects, spiders and crustaceans might have originated.

 

By Zoë Corbyn

 

A clue to how arthropods--the group of more than a million invertebrate species that includes insects, spiders and crustaceans--evolved their distinctive jointed legs has been discovered in southwestern China.

 

Nicknamed the "walking cactus" because of its spiny appearance, the Diania cactiformis fossil find is reported in a paper published February 23 in Nature. The animal belongs to the Lobopodia, a now-extinct group of animals resembling worms with legs, which may have been a relative of today's velvet worms. But it is the first species of that group found to have the jointed legs typical of Arthropoda.

 

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=walking-cactus-is-arthropods&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20110224