Tracing the Tree of Life

摘要

In 1994, researchers came across a completely new animal in a spring on a large island off the west coast of Greenland. Looking a bit like a worm, this microscopic creature had complex jaws and was so unusual that the biologists could not assign it to a known phylum. Instead, they put it in a group of its own, called Micrognathozoa. The oddball, officially named Limnognathia maerski, has been little studied since. Indeed, researchers in Greenland have documented only a few hundred specimens.