By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Thu Oct 12, 6:32 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Six hundred million years ago, in what is now China, a small, sponge-like animal laid eggs that started to divide into embryos.
Then disaster struck, and the tiny embryos died. But they were preserved in the shales and limestone deposits of Guizhou Province in southwest China.
Geologists who found them have used advanced X-ray and other imaging techniques to see what the embryos looked like, and report on Thursday that they have caught these fossilized embryos literally in the act of dividing.
"The fact that you can catch cells in process of division or in the process of dividing is astonishing because we are talking about little blobs of jelly," said Whitey Hagadorn of Amherst College in Massachusetts, who led the study.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061012/sc_nm/science_embryos_dc_2