Humanity's Oldest Known Ancestor:

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by paddoboy, Jan 30, 2017.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Bag-like sea creature was humans' oldest known ancestor
    January 30, 2017
    Saccorhytus coronarius, based on the original fossil finds. The actual creature was probably no more than a millimeter in size. Credit: S Conway Morris / Jian Han" style="color: rgb(49, 61, 87); outline: none 0px; font-weight: 700;">

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    Artist's reconstruction of Saccorhytus coronarius, based on the original fossil finds. The actual creature was probably no more than a millimeter in size. Credit: S Conway Morris / Jian Han
    Researchers have identified traces of what they believe is the earliest known prehistoric ancestor of humans—a microscopic, bag-like sea creature, which lived about 540 million years ago.

    Named Saccorhytus, after the sack-like features created by its elliptical body and large mouth, the species is new to science and was identified from microfossils found in China. It is thought to be the most primitive example of a so-called "deuterostome"—a broad biological category that encompasses a number of sub-groups, including the vertebrates.

    If the conclusions of the study, published in the journal Nature, are correct, then Saccorhytus was the common ancestor of a huge range of species, and the earliest step yet discovered on the evolutionary path that eventually led to humans, hundreds of millions of years later.



    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-bag-like-sea-creature-humans-oldest.html#jCp
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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  5. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature21072.html

    Meiofaunal deuterostomes from the basal Cambrian of Shaanxi (China)


    Deuterostomes1 include the group we belong to (vertebrates) as well as an array of disparate forms that include echinoderms2, hemichordates3 and more problematic groups such as vetulicolians4 and vetulocystids5. The Cambrian fossil record is well-populated with representative examples, but possible intermediates6, 7 are controversial and the nature of the original deuterostome remains idealized. Here we report millimetric fossils, Saccorhytus coronarius nov. gen., nov. sp., from an Orsten-like Lagerstätte from the earliest Cambrian period of South China, which stratigraphically are amongst the earliest of deuterostomes. 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 lateral openings probably served to expel water and waste material. This new form has similarities to both the vetulicolians4 and vetulocystids5 and collectively these findings suggest that a key step in deuterostome evolution was the development of lateral openings that subsequently were co-opted as pharyngeal gills2, 3, 4, 8. Depending on its exact phylogenetic position, the meiofaunal habit of Saccorhytus may help to explain the major gap between divergence times seen in the fossil record and estimates based on molecular clocks9.
     
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  7. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Why is it, because it have a big mouth ? Does its DNA matches 99.9 % to human DNA
     
  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Read the article timojon.
    The fact remains that humans are a result of a long evolutionary process.
     
  9. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I can go even farther to one cell specimen, et become even older.
     
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  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, you could.
     
  11. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Tell me all about it . My ears are ready to listen.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Tell you about what? Evolution in general? Or the steps we took to get here evolutionarily? If the latter, a good intro is The Ancestor's Tale, where our history is traced backwards through the most recent common ancestors of related animals (and very early on, plants.)
     

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