{"id":16171,"date":"2014-09-04T04:38:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T04:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/deep-sea-mushroom-may-be-new-branch-of-life\/"},"modified":"2014-09-04T04:38:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T04:38:19","slug":"deep-sea-mushroom-may-be-new-branch-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/deep-sea-mushroom-may-be-new-branch-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Sea ‘Mushroom’ May Be New Branch of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

{{A mushroom-shaped sea animal discovered off the Australian coast has defied classification in the tree of life.}}<\/p>\n

A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n

Such a situation has occurred only a handful of times in the last 100 years.<\/p>\n

The organisms, which were originally collected in 1986, are described in the academic journal Plos One.<\/p>\n

The authors of the article note several similarities with the bizarre and enigmatic soft-bodied life forms that lived between 635 and 540 million years ago – the span of Earth history known as the Ediacaran Period.<\/p>\n

These organisms, too, have proven difficult to categorise and some researchers have even suggested they were failed experiments in multi-cellular life.<\/p>\n

The authors of the paper recognise two new species of mushroom-shaped animal: Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides. Measuring only a few millimetres in size, the animals consist of a flattened disc and a stalk with a mouth on the end.<\/p>\n

During a scientific cruise in 1986, scientists collected organisms at water depths of 400m and 1,000m on the south-east Australian continental slope, near Tasmania. But the two types of mushroom-shaped organisms were recognised only recently, after sorting of the bulk samples collected during the expedition.<\/p>\n

“Finding something like this is extremely rare, it’s maybe only happened about four times in the last 100 years,” said co-author Jorgen Olesen from the University of Copenhagen.<\/p>\n

He told media: “We think it belongs in the animal kingdom somewhere; the question is where.”<\/p>\n

The system used to group every life form on Earth encompasses several levels, or taxonomic ranks.<\/p>\n

A domain is the highest taxonomic rank and below that is a kingdom. Traditionally, biologists have recognised five or six kingdoms, including animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.<\/p>\n

Kingdoms are divided into phyla, which are grouped according to similarities in general body plan.<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{A mushroom-shaped sea animal discovered off the Australian coast has defied classification in the tree of life.}} A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom. Such a situation has occurred only a handful of times in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-16171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053831,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16171.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16171"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=16171"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=16171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}