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Episode details

World Service,3 mins

Bilaterians Dominate!

CrowdScience

Available for over a year

The very first animals, which emerged in the deep oceans over half a billion years ago, experimented with all sorts of different body plans and symmetries. But when animals with bilateral symmetry emerged, everything changed. Their body shape gave them huge evolutionary advantages and they went on to outcompete everything else. Paleobiologist Dr. Frankie Dunn from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History shows presenter Anand Jagatia a trace fossil of one of the first ‘bilaterians’ and explains how they went on to dominate the world

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