Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various small chordate marine organisms of the subphylum Cephalochordata, having a long thin body with a notochord but no cranium or vertebrae, and usually found buried in sand.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A lance.
  • noun The sand-lance, amphioxns, or branchiostome, a skull-less fish-like vertebrate, representing a genus Branchiostoma or Ámphioxus, a family Branchiostomidæ or Á mphioxidæ, an order Pharyngobranchii, a class Leptocardii, and a ‘branch’ of vertebrates lately named Cephalochorda. See these names, and Acrania.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A small fishlike animal (Amphioxus lanceolatus), remarkable for the rudimentary condition of its organs. It is the type of the class Leptocardia. See amphioxus, leptocardia.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun any of a group of primitive marine animals, of subphylum Cephalochordata, having a notochord instead of a backbone

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun small translucent lancet-shaped burrowing marine animal; primitive forerunner of the vertebrates

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The lancelet is a filter feeder and has several organs to aid in consumption and digestion.

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • Amphioxus, also known as the lancelet, diverged from vertebrates more than 500 million years ago, and is often studied by researchers hoping to learn more about the early history of vertebrates.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • The lancelet is a filter feeder and has several organs to aid in consumption and digestion.

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • Amphioxus, also known as the lancelet, diverged from vertebrates more than 500 million years ago, and is often studied by researchers hoping to learn more about the early history of vertebrates.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • Amphioxus (Lancelet) - Amphioxus, also called lancelet, is a small marine animal resembling a miniature fish without eyes (or even a head), which is found widely in coastal waters around warmer parts of the world.

    unknown title 2009

  • Amphioxus (Lancelet) - Amphioxus, also called lancelet, is a small marine animal resembling a miniature fish without eyes (or even a head), which is found widely in coastal waters around warmer parts of the world.

    unknown title 2009

  • The coming availability of multiple invertebrate chordate genomes Broad has completed another Ciona species and JGI has sequenced the lancelet will doubtless catalyze the discovery of more interesting changes that led to “vertebrate” features.

    Insight Into Eye Evolution Deals Blow To Intelligent Design - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, OPPOSITION LEADER: The government is imposed what I would call -- some people try to say it is a repressive lancelet.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2002 2002

  • By "launces" the writer meant what we should now call the lancelet.

    The Cornwall Coast

  • Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey.

    Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright

  • They also used existing chromosome-scale genomes of cnidarians (sea anemones, jellyfish and corals, among others), sponges and amphioxus, or lancelet—an invertebrate that is very closely related to vertebrates and is a bilaterian, an animal with bilateral symmetry.

    The Closest Living Relative of the First Animal Has Finally Been Found Viviane Callier 2023

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