Pikaia

Extant forms are small, only three to seven centimeters in length, slender, laterally compressed, translucent, and found in sandy sediments of coastal waters around the world.

Modern lancelets closely resemble 530 million year old Pikaia, likely one of the first chordates, fossils of which are known from the Burgess Shale.

As such, they are often studied because they hold clues within their genomes about the evolution of early vertebrates.

Let's go over their anatomy and physiology, ecology, and phylogeny.

On the other hand, countless experiments took place simultaneously in the Cambrian seas.

Pikaia was a small creature similar to an amphioxus, which possessed primitive signs of a structure similar to the spinal cord.

This simple anatomical characteristic would lead to the evolution of all vertebrates, including human beings.

Pikaia is one of the most important creatures of Burgess Shale, not because it was large or fearsome, but because it represented the beginning of a completely new branch of animal evolution.

Otoya was a predator worm that used a retractable pharynx to capture prey.

This creature could extend its mouth outwards like a tube to catch small animals and insert them into its body.

And we're not here.

If you can Google something called, uh, Pikaia So P-I-K-A-I-A, I think.

Got it.

I'm really testing your skills here, Joe, aren't I?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Pikaia is from the Cambrian period, so it's about a half a billion years ago.

Okay.