A Bag-Like Sea Creature With Large Mouth, No Anus Could Be The Earliest Known Human Prehistoric Ancestor?

Scientists said that humanity may evolve from a bag-like sea creature with a large mouth and no anus and moved by wriggling. They based this on the microfossils they have found in China, which were known as "Saccorhytus" that lived about 540 million years ago.

Bag-like sea creature was humans' oldest known ancestor https://t.co/Y97LdO15CV

— Stephan Oeller (@NorakGroup) January 31, 2017

The findings of the discovery were published in the journal Nature. It was led by an international team of researchers at Cambridge University in the U.K. and Northwest University in Xi'an, China.

Saccorhytus was about a millimeter-long and wriggled around in the mud with a large mouth. It lived between the grains of sand on the seabed and had no anus. The said creature belonged to the category called deuterostomes, according to CNN.

According to the researchers, deuterostomes are the common ancestor of many species. They started to evolve into diverse branches as starfish, acorn worms, sea urchins and even humans half a billion years ago. On the other hand, the scientists cannot figure out what the origins would have looked like.

Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge said that they think that as an early deuterostome, this may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including humans. He further said that to the naked eye, the fossils they studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail is jaw-dropping. He added that all deuterostomes had a common ancestor and they think that is what they are looking at here.

Meanwhile, Degan Shu at the Northwest University said that they have notched up some important discoveries in the past. These include the earliest fish and a remarkable variety of other early deuterostomes. He further said that Saccorhytus now give them remarkable insights into the very first stages of the evolution of a group that led to the fish and ultimately to humans. The microfossils were found in Shaanxi Province, in Central China. This pre-dates all other known deuterostomes, according to Independent.