An ancient creature that looks like an “angry Minion” with no anus is more closely related to penis worms and mud dragons than to humans, a new study suggests.
The 500 million-year-old Saccorhytus coronarius was previously tied to a group of animals called deuterostomes that produced vertebrates and humans, suggesting it was our earliest known ancestor. But a new research team has decided it’s an ecdysozoan, a group that includes insects and marine invertebrates such as penis worms (priapulids) and mud dragons (Kinorhyncha), and which diverged from a common ancestor to humans much further back in evolutionary history.
The latest findings make an important amendment to the evolutionary tree and our understanding of how life developed, the researchers said.
Study co-author Philip Donoghue, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, told Live Science that the team was always confident that S. coronarius needed reclassification, but joked at the idea it was a relief for some of his colleagues. “I’m sure some people were relieved that we’re not descended from wrinkly ball sacs,” he said.
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