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These tube-shaped creatures may be the earliest known parasites

Animals that lived over 500 million years ago may have stolen food from their hosts’ mouths

ancient brachiopod illustration

This artistic rendering shows a 512-million-year-old clamlike brachiopod covered in tubelike organisms (white) that may have been parasites, an analysis of fossils uncovered in China concludes.

Zhifei Zhang/Northwest Univ.

By Jonathan Lambert

- More than 2 years ago

Read another version of this article at Science News Explores

Tube-dwelling creatures that spent their lives cemented to the shells of clamlike brachiopods over 500 million years ago may be the earliest known parasites.