Synopsis In order to address this subject further and to assess progress in the examination of animal origins and transitions, an international group of scientists was convened at the Society for Comparative Biology meeting in January 2007. "That theory is worthless. It isn't even wrong!" Wolfgang Pauli. The origin of multicellular animals is one of those difficult and delicate biological problems. Many ideas have been proffered and many hypotheses have been tested with respect to the subject. In order to address this subject further and to assess progress in the examination of animal origins and transitions, an international group of scientists was convened at the Society for Comparative Biology meetings in January of 2007. The meeting sought to bring together experts in many areas of research on the origin of multicellular animals from a variety of biological perspectives. In the SICB symposium "Key Transitions in Animal Evolution" the current views on old and new debates of important concepts were presented, discussed and evaluated. In order to put the papers delivered in this symposium into context some background information is presented in this introduction.
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