Very Unusual Bag-Like Saccorhytus Coronarius Is Humans’ Oldest Ancestor

– Saccorhytus Coronarius is a very unusual bag-like sea creature with a huge mouth and no anus. Scientists now say it’s humans’ oldest known ancestor.

Found in Shaanxi Province, in central China and named Saccorhytus, after the sack-like features created by its elliptical body and large mouth, this microscopic creature lived about 540 million years ago and it was the common ancestor of a huge range of species, including humans.

The Saccorhytus may represent “the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves,” Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology and a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge said.

According a to study published in the journal Nature “the bag-like body bears a prominent mouth and associated folds, and behind them up to four conical openings on either side of the body as well as possible sensory structures. An anus may have been absent, and correspondingly the later openings probably served to expel water and waste material.”

By studying the minute fossils using an electron microscope and CT scanner, researchers were able to create a picture of what this creature may have looked like.

So this tiny sea-dwelling blob that may have pooped through its mouth.In the early Cambrian period, the region would have been a shallow sea. Saccorhytus was so small that it probably lived in between individual grains of sediment on the sea bed.