chordates could have originated much earlier than expected, as they commented: "The superb preservation of this Middle Cambrian organism [Pikaia] makes it a landmark history of the phylum [Chordata] to which all vertebrates, including man, belong." It is for this knowledge Pikaia as an old chordate that it is often misleadingly and falsely attributed to as an ancestor of all vertebrates, or the oldest fish, or the oldest ancestor of humans. Before Pikaia and other Cambrian chordates were fully appreciated, it was generally believed that the first chordates appeared much later, such as in Ordovician (484–443 mya). The establishment of Cambrian chordates, according to Stephen Jay Gould, prompted "revised views of evolution, ecology and development," and remarked: "So much for chordate uniqueness marked by slightly later evolution." However, Gould did not believe that Pikaia itself was unique as an early chordate or that it was "the actual ancestor of vertebrates;" he presumed that there could be undiscovered fossils that are more closely linked to vertebrate ancestry. The presence of a creature as complex as Pikaia some 530 million years ago reinforces the controversial view that the diversification of life must have extended back well before Cambrian times – perhaps deep into the Precambrian. The discovery of Metaspriggina, a primitive fish of similar age which seems to have already started to develop a jaw and the presence of conodonts, the teeth of an extinct type of fish belonging to the Agnatha some 20 Ma before Pikaia, does provide support for that view. Gould's interpretation and evolutionary contingency Gould, in his presidential address of the Paleontological Society on 27 October 1988, cited Pikaia to explain the trends of evolutionary changes:Wind back life's tape to the Burgess (first erasing what actually came after), let it play again, and this time a quite different cast may emerge. If the cast lacked Pikaia, the first chordate, we might not be here—and the world would be no worse... Let us thank our lucky stars for the survival of Pikaia. He elaborated the same idea in "An epilogue on Pikaia" in his book Wonderful Life "to save the best for the last," in which he made a statement:Pikaia is the missing and final link in our story of contingency—the direct connection between Burgess decimation and eventual human evolution... Wind the tape of life back to Burgess times, and let it play again. If Pikaia does not survive