IntroductionSelected article on the Permian world and its legacies
A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata which is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords. Some tunicates live as solitary individuals but others replicate by budding and become colonies, each unit being known as a zooid. They are marine filter feeders with a water-filled, sac-like body structure and two tubular openings, known as siphons, through which they draw in and expel water. During their respiration and feeding they take in water through the incurrent (or inhalant) siphon and expel the filtered water through the excurrent (or exhalant) siphon. Most adult tunicates are sessile and are permanently attached to rocks or other hard surfaces on the ocean floor; others such as salps, doliolids and pyrosomes swim in the pelagic zone of the sea as adults. Various species are commonly known as sea squirts, sea pork, sea liver or sea tulips.
The Tunicata first appear in the fossil record in the early Cambrian period. Despite their simple appearance and very different adult form, their close relationship to the vertebrates is shown by the fact that during their mobile larval stage, they possess a notochord or stiffening rod and resemble a tadpole. Their name derives from their unique outer covering or "tunic" which is formed from proteins and carbohydrates and acts as an exoskeleton. In some species it is thin, translucent and gelatinous while in others it is thick, tough and stiff. (see more...) Did you know?![]()
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Selected article on the Permian in human science, culture and economics![]() In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory that was explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposedcommon descent and a branching tree of life. The theory was based on the idea of natural selection, and it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology. The debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during the 1920s through the 1940s. Before that time most biologists argued that other factors were responsible for evolution. The synthesis of natural selection with Mendelian genetics during the 1920s and 1930s founded the new discipline of population genetics. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology—the modern evolutionary synthesis. (see more...) GeochronologyEpochs - Cisuralian - Guadalupian - Lopingian Geography - Pangaea - Panthalassa Stratigraphic units - Red Beds of Texas and Oklahoma Researchers - Edward Drinker Cope SubcategoriesQuality ContentFeatured Permian articles - Amphibian Things you can doRelated contentAssociated WikimediaThe following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
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