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Published online 4 August 2000 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news000810-1
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Getting a head
Henry Gee reports as a controversial hypothesis about development is turned on its head and light is shed on one of the worldÕs stranger creatures.
One of the most striking differences between vertebrates (backboned animals) and other animals is that vertebrates have distinctive heads, each with a well-protected brain, a mouth and a cluster of sense organs. Understanding how the head evolved in primarily headless creatures is an abiding problem, but thanks to researchers in Sweden it just got a little clearer.
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