<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/48796a59-e1bc-46e6-a742-713260dfe9de/F808AF3C-F45E-4A62-9C95-62EBEF0BFB2F/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews" style="font-size: 11px;">www.reuters.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews">WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sexual reproduction may be nearly as old as animal life itself, according to researchers who discovered a new species of organism that lived 540 million years ago.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews"><div align="center"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.reuters.com/img/805D60FD-0DB4-458E-B922-2195A41B854D" alt="Photo" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews">The tube-like creatures called Funisia dorothea anchored themselves in abundant flocks onto the shallow, sandy seabed of what is now the Australian outback.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews">Nothing appears to have evolved yet to eat them, so they lived peaceful lives, reproducing sexually at times and by asexual methods such as budding at other times, Mary Droser of the University of California Riverside and colleagues reported in the journal Science.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews"><P>They behaved very much like modern corals, sponges and other multicellular animals, Droser said in a telephone interview.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2040405820080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews"><P>"They would have been hitting you mid-calf as you walked in these very dense clusters," she said. "Almost always, organisms that do this do it as a result of sexual reproduction."</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/F808AF3C-F45E-4A62-9C95-62EBEF0BFB2F/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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