About 540 million years ago, a wrinkled, pouch-like sea creature measuring only one millimeter in size floated between grains of sand on the ocean floor where central China is now located.
It had an oval symmetrical shape and its most distinctive feature was a large mouth, which it used to absorb food from other, smaller creatures. Saccorhytus coronaries are the earliest known creatures on the path of evolution, the development of which ultimately led to the formation of man.
An international team of scientists has discovered a tiny creature called the Saccorhytus coronaries in Shaanxi province, central China. Saccorhytus lived 540 million years ago, during the early Cambrian period, when the region in which it was found covered a shallow ocean, according to their data, published this week in the journal Nature.
Such an advanced age of this species allows us to call it the oldest of the category of 'deuterostomes', which are considered the common ancestors of a wide range of other species, from starfish, sea urchins, to intestinal breathers and a large group of animals classified as vertebrates.
In other words, according to a study by the University of Cambridge, the creature may be the earliest known step along the evolutionary path that ultimately led to the emergence of man.
Sources: history
