Carl Zimmer might be one of the best science writers out there, and earlier this week he had an interesting piece in the New York Times called In a Marine Worm’s Eyes, the Theory of Evolution.
A team of American and European researchers report that they have discovered an eye that could represent the first step in this evolution [of the human eye]. They have found, in effect, a swimming eyeball.
“This is in no way the ancestor of the human eye, but it’s the first time we have had a model of it,”said Yale Passamaneck, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii. He and his colleagues report the discovery in the online journal EvoDevo.
For a reminder of how fully evolved human eyes work, we turn to the Bill Nye archives — in specific, a parody of “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors.