Fossilized Gut Reveals New Information On Digestive System

Researchers were able to study the fossilized gut of a 320-million-year-old creature by using high energy X-ray microscopy, according to a study at the University of Bristol in the UK.

For the first time researchers were able to recover evidence about the digestive system through a fossil specimen.

"We used a particle accelerator called a synchrotron to image the fossil in 3D. This allowed us to create a digital reconstruction of its internal anatomy," Dr. Imran Rahman, lead author of the study and paleontologist, said in a news release.

The fossil is a "primitive" relative of modern sea urchins and starfish and it belongs to a major group of marine invertebrates called echinoderms. The researchers claimed that the fossil represents an extinct group known as blastoids, during its early development phase.

"The results have highlighted a number of previously unknown differences between the fossil and its living relatives," said Dr. Colin Sumrall, a co-author of the study, from the University of Tennessee. "This has forced us to rethink our ideas about how the digestive system evolved in echinoderms."

This study was published today in the journal Biology Letters.

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