Amphioxus

That lovely little creature up there is the Amphioxus. You may have also heard it called the Lancelet. They are small creatures usually found buried in sand in the shallow areas of temperate and tropical seas. It is important for zoologists to study them because they may hold information about the origins of vertebrates. They are used as a comparison to show how vertebrates have evolved and adapted. Lancelets split from vertebrates more than 520 million years ago, but their genomes hold clues about evolution. They are regarded as similar to the archetypal vertebrate form.