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A chordate (/ ˈ k ɔːr d eɪ t / KOR-dayt) is a deuterostomal bilaterian animal belonging to the phylum Chordata (/ k ɔːr ˈ d eɪ t ə / kor-DAY-tə). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five distinctive physical characteristics ( synapomorphies ) that distinguish them from other taxa .
Harvard University palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould popularised Pikaia as an ancestral species of chordates in his 1989 book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, [13] from which Pikaia became known as the "most famous early chordate fossil," [14] or the earliest chordate, [15] or the oldest ancestor of humans. [16] [17]
Pikaia gracilens is an extinct, primitive chordate marine animal known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia.Described in 1911 by Charles Doolittle Walcott as an annelid, and in 1979 by Harry B. Whittington and Simon Conway Morris as a chordate, it became "the most famous early chordate fossil", [1] or "famously known as the earliest described Cambrian chordate". [2]
The lancelets (/ ˈ l æ n s l ɪ t s, ˈ l ɑː n-/ LA(H)N-slits), also known as amphioxi (sg.: amphioxus / ˌ æ m f i ˈ ɒ k s ə s / AM-fee-OK-səs), consist of 32 described species of "fish-like" benthic filter feeding chordates [9] in the subphylum Cephalochordata, class Leptocardii, and family Branchiostomatidae.
The dorsal nerve cord serves as a hollow-like backbone where signals are sent throughout the body due to nervous tissue being located in this region. [2] The notochord is also toward the tail of the chordate but closer toward the middle of the body than the dorsal nerve cord and is a water-filled structure that allows the chordate to move in ...
Agnatha (/ ˈ æ ɡ n ə θ ə, æ ɡ ˈ n eɪ θ ə /; [3] from Ancient Greek ἀ-(a-) 'without' and γνάθος (gnáthos) 'jaws') is a paraphyletic infraphylum [4] of non-gnathostome vertebrates, or jawless fish, in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, consisting of both living (cyclostomes) and extinct (conodonts, anaspids, and ostracoderms, among others).
Some chordate invertebrates, such as tunicates, develop a notochord during the larval stage but lose it through subsequent stages into adulthood. The notochord is important for signaling the dorso-ventral patterning of cells coming from the mesodermal progenitors. This helps form the precursors needed for certain organs and the embryo to develop.
Ciona intestinalis (sometimes known by the common name of vase tunicate) is an ascidian (sea squirt), a tunicate with very soft tunic. Its Latin name literally means "pillar of intestines", referring to the fact that its body is a soft, translucent column-like structure, resembling a mass of intestines sprouting from a rock. [1]