Perhaps one of the best books on evolution for amateurs is the 2015 Steve Parker Evolution: The Whole Story, published by Thames & Hudson.
I do not know when "protostomes" and "deuterostomes" became a thing but it interesting that this incredibly important concept was mentioned in passing only one time on one page (page 111) in Steve Parker's 576-page opus.
Obviously I would not have learned about protostomes and deuterostomes in that book.
Nor is the concept mentioned in Richard Fortey's 2011 Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms, where it could have made a huge difference.
I came across that phenomenon in Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale. Since then, I have done a lot of "research" on the internet. Fascinating.
That concept -- protostomes and deuterostomes -- makes all the difference in the world helping one sort out the evolutionary tree. It blows me away that this concept is so important and is a relatively new discovery. It's hard to say when the concept was first published, but it appears that the year "1995" was important.
All protostomes are invertebrates, but not all invertebrates are protostomes.
There are three major clades of deuterostomes:
- Chordata (vertebrates and tunicates)
- Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers)
- Hemichordata (acorn worms and graptolites)
It was my reading about the acorn worm that started me down this rabbit hole.
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