LOOKING down a microscope at small whizzy things is just so 19th century. After all, Victorian naturalists did such a great job of describing, cataloguing and classifying species that there's nothing left to discover, right?
Well, actually no. There has been an embarrassing hole in our knowledge all along, in the shape of the larvae of the humble sea lily. For more than a century biologists have been trying, and failing, to get a look at this tiny creature. Some tried diving down and capturing the larvae alive, but they couldn't go deep enough. Others tried to breed them in the lab, but the adults always died.
But earlier this year a team of biologists from the University of Tokyo announced that they had successfully bred a sea lily in the lab and taken a good, long look at its larvae. The announcement was greeted with sighs of relief from ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.