Wow, our oldest ancestor has been discovered and it’s a sea creature measuring just one millimetre. Fossils of the animal, named Saccorhytus, have been found in China and are evidence of one of the earliest forms of the animal group deuterostomes,…
…from which humans are thought to have eventually evolved.
Wouldn’t that make a mind blowing episode of Who Do You Think You Are?
Our teeny tiny ancestor apparently lived among grains of sand and ate and passed its waste through the same orifice – ugh!
Professor Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge, told the BBC: “To the naked eye, the fossils we studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail was jaw-dropping.
“We think that as an early deuterostome this may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves.”
The Saccorhytus fossil is 540 million years old and has been so well preserved, it has actually told scientists quite a lot about what this creature would have looked like.
It is believed to have had skin, muscles and a large mouth and would have moved about by wriggling.
It’s almost impossible to imagine how humans could have evolved from this miniscule life form – wouldn’t it be amazing to see the process in speeded up form.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38800987