Word.ws English Dictionary

urbilaterian

urbilaterian noun: the hypothetical last common ancestor to all bilaterians.

Noun

urbilaterian (plural urbilaterians)

  1. The hypothetical last common ancestor to all bilaterians.
    • There is no fossil record to show that the urbilaterian existed. However, the echoes of the existence of this creature are recorded in stunning clarity in the genes of every living descendant, from fruit fly to spider to human.2007, Aaron G. Filler, The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species, page 153
    • This way, different aspects of the molecular architecture of the urbilaterian nervous system are reconstructed and yield insight into the degree of centralization that was in place in the bilaterian ancestors.2008, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Volume 363, Issues 1493-1496, page 1523

Forms of urbilaterian

pluralurbilaterians

Origin of urbilaterian

From ur- (“original”) + bilaterian.

Questions about urbilaterian

What does urbilaterian mean?
Urbilaterian means the hypothetical last common ancestor to all bilaterians.
What part of speech is urbilaterian?
Urbilaterian is a noun.
What is the plural of urbilaterian?
The plural of urbilaterian is urbilaterians.

Words near urbilaterian in the dictionary

  1. urbicultural
  2. urbiculture
  3. Urbieta
  4. Urbietas
  5. urbilatarian
  6. urbilaterian
  7. urbilaterians
  8. Urbina
  9. Urbinas
  10. Urbino
  11. URBIs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: urbilaterian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “urbilaterian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/urbilaterian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.