Scientists Map 600M-Year Evolutionary 'Highways' Through Animal Chromosome Changes

Across 600 million years of animal life, the chromosomes within our cells have not wandered freely but have followed recognizable historical pathways — fusing, splitting, and rearranging in patterns that persist long after the original events. A team of researchers, working across 5,821 genomes from 4,454 species, has traced these pathways back to 29 ancestral chromosome groups shared by the earliest animals, revealing that the diversity of life is built not from chaos but from the repeated recombination of ancient genetic architecture. Their findings suggest that evolution, at the level of th