Product Description
This Pikaia, 4" figure includes hand painted features to give it realistic details that are true to natural anatomy. This figure is considered a museum quality replica. Highest Quality Natural Rubber.
Pikaia gracilens was a primitive chordate having a lancelet-like body that lacked a well-defined head components and averaged about 3.8 cm in length. On each side of its head is a pair of large, antenna-like tentacles similar to those of snails. There are a series of short appendages on either side of the underside of the head just after the mouth, and their exact nature or function is unknown. The pharynx is associated with six pairs of slits with tiny filaments that could be used for respiratory apparatus. A hollow tubular structure running from its anterior part of the body to the tail was earlier believed to be an indication of the presence of a notochord, a defining feature of all chordates from protochordates to mammals. However, a reanalysis in 2012 indicated that the hollow tube is not the notochord and instead described it as a dorsal organ, purported to be a storage tube. The notochord was reinterpreted to run underneath the dorsal organ a thin rod-like filament. The body segments are anatomically blocks of skeletal muscles, called the myomeres, which are found in vertebrates only. No eyes can be observed. The muscle orientation and flat shaped body indicate that Pikaia was an active and free swimmer. It would have swum by throwing its body into a series of S-shaped, zigzag curves, as do living eels. However, its myomere arrangement suggests that Pikaia could not be a fast swimmer.
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