Creature from the Black Lagoon
Scientists are hoping a "creature from the black lagoon" discovered in a
Scottish quarry will throw new light on evolution. The frog-like creature, which
is unlike anything discovered before, could prove evolution is more
complicated than had been thought.
The animal has been given the name Eucritta melanolimnetes which translates
as "the creature from the black lagoon." The six-inch long creature was
discovered in a disused quarry in East Kirkton, near Edinburgh. It represents a
type of creature which is such an oddity that no-one knows quite where to put it
in the fossil family tree, according to the science journal Nature.
It has characteristics typical of the main types of land-dwelling vertebrates, the
amphibians, but it also resembles the other group which includes reptiles, birds
and mammals. The creature is thought to date from about 338 million years ago
- about the time the two main types of land dwelling vertebrates began to evolve
separately evolution.
This small disused quarry discovered in the 1980s contains the earliest
community of land-dwelling animals in the world. It has produced up to eight
new species, including the early ancestors of modern frogs, the earliest
scorpion and the earliest relative of the spider.
Neil Shubin, from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, said the creature
was evidence of "parallel evolution" among groups of early terrestrial
vertebrate. Writing in Nature, he said: "Parallel evolution may be a fact of life for
palaeontologists and a necessary consequence of how new structures evolve.
Generally, it seems that major groups are not assembled in a simple linear or
progressive manner - new features are often 'cut and pasted' on different
groups at different times." |
