Comment on "Ultrastructure reveals ancestral vertebrate pharyngeal skeleton in yunnanozoans"

Kaiyue He; Jianni Liu; Jian Han; Qiang Ou; Ailin Chen; Zhifei Zhang; Dongjing Fu; Hong Hua; Xingliang Zhang; Degan Shu

doi:10.1126/science.ade9707

Comment on "Ultrastructure reveals ancestral vertebrate pharyngeal skeleton in yunnanozoans"

Science. 2023 Jul 28;381(6656):eade9707. doi: 10.1126/science.ade9707. Epub 2023 Jul 28.

Authors

Kaiyue He^#¹, Jianni Liu^#¹, Jian Han¹, Qiang Ou², Ailin Chen³, Zhifei Zhang¹, Dongjing Fu¹, Hong Hua¹, Xingliang Zhang¹, Degan Shu¹

Affiliations

¹ Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Early Life and Environments, State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University (NWU), Xi'an 710069, P. R. China.
² Early Life Evolution Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, P. R. China.
³ Research Center of Paleobiology, Yuxi Normal University, Yuxi, Yunnan 653100, P. R. China.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37499008
DOI: 10.1126/science.ade9707

Abstract

Tian et al. (Research Articles, 8 July 2022, abm2708) hypothesized that yunnanozoans are stem-group vertebrates on the basis of "cellular cartilage", "fibrillin microfibers", and "subchordal rod" associated with the branchial arches of yunnanozoans. However, we reject the presence of cellular cartilage, fibrillin, and the phylogenetic proposal of vertebrate affinities based on ultrastructure and morphology of yunnanozoans from more than 8000 specimens.

MeSH terms

Animals
Cartilage*
Pharynx* / ultrastructure
Phylogeny
Vertebrates*