Abstract
Lancelets, or amphioxus, are small worm-like marine animals that share key anatomical and developmental features with vertebrates and tunicates. Together, the vertebrates, tunicates and lancelets constitute the Chordates, having had a common ancestor that lived about 550 million years ago. The lancelets are the modern survivors of ancient chordates.
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Fig. 3.1 Putnam, N.H et al. 2008. The amphioxus genome and the evolution of the chordate karyotype. Nature 453: 1064–1072 (Fig. 3, page 1067).
Fig. 3.2 King,B.L. et al. 2011. A natural deletion of the HoxC cluster in Elasmobranch fishes. Science 334: 1517 (Fig. 1, page 1517).
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Fig. 3.5 Gregory, W.K. 1974. Evolution Emerging. Vol. II. Arno Press, New York, U.S.A. (Vol. 2 Fig. 24.2, page 995).
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Lima-de-Faria, A. (2014). Astonishing Gene Permanence Throughout Vertebrates and the Origin of the Skeleton. In: Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06056-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06056-9_3
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