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Nature 451, 133-134 (10 January 2008) | doi:10.1038/451133a; Published online 9 January 2008
Palaeontology: Ancient worms in armour
Jean-Bernard Caron1
Abstract
It requires a quirk of fossilization for the soft parts of an animal to be preserved. Study of such a specimen of the mysterious machaeridians provides these organisms with a well defined evolutionary home.
A 480-million-year-old fossil from Morocco, described by Vinther et al. on page 185 of this issue1, ends a long controversy over a group of enigmatic fossils called the machaeridians. Now convincingly interpreted as primitive segmented (annelid) worms, the extinct machaeridians had a scaly 'armour' of mineralized shell plates over or around a soft body of previously unknown form.
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