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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Ancient Crayfish Fossils Unravel Evolution Mystery


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This 106-million-year-old fossil is the oldest evidence of crayfish in the Southern Hemisphere (the animal appears in the darker rock, its tail on the left).

Scientists say its discovery sheds light on how there came to be two very similar but very distant populations of crayfish on Earth—one in the Southern Hemisphere, the other in the north.

Photograph by Erich Fitzgerald, courtesy Anthony Martin