Humble sponges may have been the earliest ancestors of humans and other animals, say scientists, resolving evolutionary biology's most-heated debate. Previous genomic analyses "flip-flopped" between whether sponges or comb jellies are our deepest ancestors. They analysed all key genomic datasets released between 2015 and 2017. "Phylogenomics, the use of genomic data in phylogenetics, is a relatively new science," Pisani said. "We have now better analytical tools and data and this study seriously challenges the accepted status quo," he added.

Source: dna December 03, 2017 08:37 UTC