This could be our earliest known ancestor
An artist’s reconstruction of Saccorhytus coronarius, based on the original fossil finds. The actual creature was probably no more than a millimetre in size. You won’t find it in your family album, but a tiny prehistoric
creature with a bag-like body, a huge mouth and no anus has become the
best candidate yet for our earliest known ancestor. Thought to have lived as long as 540 million years ago, the creature
is the oldest known member of a large group of animals known as
deuterostomes, which includes vertebrates – such as humans – as well as
starfish, sea urchins and a host of other fauna.
