A small, transparent, fish-like marine animal with a notochord instead of a true backbone, found in sandy seabeds and crucial to understanding vertebrate evolution.
From Greek 'amphi-' (both/sharp at both ends) + 'oxys' (sharp/pointed). Named in 1836 by Costa for its characteristic pointed ends, the term literally means 'sharp at both ends.'
Amphioxus is one of the most important creatures in all of biology—it's like a living textbook showing us what our ancestors looked like 500 million years ago, with a proto-spine but no real backbone.
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