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Scientists Find 'Oldest Human Ancestor' -- A Big-Mouthed Sea Creature With No Anus (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Researchers have discovered the earliest known ancestor of humans -- along with a vast range of other species. They say that fossilized traces of the 540-million-year-old creature are "exquisitely well preserved." The microscopic sea animal is the earliest known step on the evolutionary path that led to fish and -- eventually -- to humans. Details of the discovery from central China appear in Nature journal. The research team says that Saccorhytus is the most primitive example of a category of animals called "deuterostomes" which are common ancestors of a broad range of species, including vertebrates (backboned animals). Saccorhytus was about a millimeter in size, and is thought to have lived between grains of sand on the sea bed. The researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus, which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice. The study was carried out by an international team of researchers, from the UK, China and Germany. Among them was Prof Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge. The study suggests that its body was symmetrical, which is a characteristic inherited by many of its evolutionary descendants, including humans. Saccorhytus was also covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin and muscles, leading the researchers to conclude that it moved by contracting its muscles and got around by wriggling. The researchers say that its most striking feature is its large mouth, relative to the rest of its body. They say that it probably ate by engulfing food particles, or even other creatures. Also interesting are the conical structures on its body. These, the scientists suggest, might have allowed the water that it swallowed to escape and so might have been a very early version of gills.
Well, that lets the current POTUS out . . . near as I can tell, he's all anus!
Like I told my kid the other day, "You might be a descendant of a big-mouthed sea creature with no anus, but I certainly am not!"
..... so predictable.
Pretty sure that guy sits a few cubes over.
NT
I was going to post that I had found the anus. It has been masquerading around as my ex-wife, but the Trump trolls beat me to the draw.
Sounds like one of my ex-girlfriends.
The evidence for why some people talk out of their anus.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...of course
I know this comes later in evolution, but doesn't the first orifice for the anus, and the second the mouth in a deuterostome? I realize this creature has only one opening, so it uses it for both. If so, it shouldn't be called a "big mouthed sea creature with no anus" but a "big anus sea creature with no mouth."
So... these were the evolutionary ancestors of the Slaver race? (From Larry Niven's Known Space stories)
Must ... resist ... Trump ... jokes ...
Table-ized A.I.
Well, that explains some things.
A gaping mouth and a weird posterior...
AND NOT A SINGLE MOM JOKE ANYWHERE?
Internet, I am disappoint.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Came here for the Trump jokes. Not disappointed so far.
Of course libtard are clearly evolved from something else
Not that fun wouldn't be had with this subject any time, but I think this week was a particularly poor time to post this article.
Have gnu, will travel.
researchers discovered a complete anus with a mouth at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus, which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice.
This one traits makes it more closely related to humans than anything else in the universe.
Karma to burn - waste your points downmodding me all you like (besides, I really kinda hate having to moderate all the time).
My English teacher told me to shut up and stop the diarrhea of the mouth.
I can totally see it! That's what it looks like in Spore anyway.
âoeThe Talking Asshole Routineâ from Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.
This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called âoeThe Better âOleâ that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, âoeOh I say, are you still down there, old thing?â
âoeNah I had to go relieve myself.â
After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: âoeItâ(TM)s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.â
After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpoleâ(TM)s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous â" (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) â" except for the eyes you dig. Thats one thing the asshole couldnâ(TM)t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldnâ(TM)t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crabâ(TM)s eyes on the end of a stalk.
So far, jfdavis668 is the only person to make a sensible comment. (As opposed to some lame, obvious, snarky, schoolboy type joke.)
I was thinking about that deuterostome angle myself. I wondered if this critter was supposed to be before the deuterostome/protostome split. But they explicitly say in the article that it is a deuterostome. Well, the article didn't say there was no anus, just that they hadn't found one (yet).
.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
and we've been making up for lost time for the last 50,000 years.
Creature with no anus? Now the assholes are everywhere, but now, no balls anymore.
Finally spotted in the wild.
That's Obama. Full of it since there was no anus.
Swinging at the low hanging fruit since 1968
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
At level 2 and above, I saw 22 comments, only three of which were serious. The comments by jfdavis668 and associated replies.
If this continues, I will just stay off the site.
Ironic since people are nothing but assholes nowadays.
Presence of hair, breasts, and other evidence points to merpeople being mammals. Their privates (including anus) resemble those of a dolphin, seal, manatee, or other marine mammal, once you get a mermaid to unfasten her scaled swimsuit.
It's is older and also an ancestor
I know; the temptation is undeniable, but resist. I'd like just one slashdot story without a "my guy is bigger than your guy" political flamewar.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
On what basis do we know this is the "oldest human ancestor", even theoretically?
What evidence is there that history is:
Saccorhytus -> ... -> Human ...rather than...
Saccorhytus -> ... -> extinction
Some earlier organism -> something vaguely similar to Saccorhytus -> ... -> Human
Is there actual evidence for the first scenario over the second, or is this basically "sciencey clickbait"?
I thought that the "embryo development parallels/replays evolution" thing was a myth? So the anus forming first in the embryo has nothing to do with when it first evolved.
(This shouldn't be confused with studying similarities in embryo development to infer evolutionary relationships.)
.. but I've never had a supervisor direct me to find an anus, and therefore I've never had to report to a supervisor "Sorry, couldn't find it."
the Feminist.
If you thought Creationists had fits over the idea we're descended from primates, just imagine how much of a conniption fit they'll have over this.
He did come from Earth!
Have you seen it's picture? Proof that humanity is descended from Jaba the Hutt!
... assholes appeared only in recent times. Back then creatures were more civilized.
It's Pac-Man
What Will God Do Now That He Has Been Exposed As A Fraud?
Hey don't make fun of the Grand Nagus.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Years ago I was watching a TV show where a professor was arguing that a nothing could live in a 2D universe because there would be no way for it to feed, as feeding required both a month and an anus. I thought it sounded wrong at the time, why not just regurgitate waste through the mouth? I must have been pretty young at the time, but it's kinda nice to get confirmation all these years later.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Years ago I was watching a TV show where a professor was arguing that a nothing could live in a 2D universe because there would be no way for it to feed, as feeding required both a month and an anus. I thought it sounded wrong at the time, why not just regurgitate waste through the mouth? I must have been pretty young at the time, but it's kinda nice to get confirmation all these years later.
In a 2-dimensional universe you are an isosceles triangle, sir.
Cheers from the Great Circle.
"which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice"
For this reason many have suggested that the Saccorhytus is the ancestor of all Democrats.
Just because the anus forms first in the embryo does not necessarily mean that the embryo of a proto-deuterostome used that same hole "first" before evolving the second one. Embryo development itself changes with evolution; there's no reason to suspect that each evolutionary step could only add features onto the very end of gestation.
An AC has helpfully linked Wikipedia's sourced article on recapitulation theory, which says:
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelismâ"often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"â"is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). Since embryos also evolve in different ways, the theory of recapitulation is seen as a historical side-note, rather than as dogma in the field of developmental biology.
I think whoever did the artist's concept must have been an LOTR fan.
Wait for it..... Donaldus Trumpus although Hilarus Clintus came in second....
From the data: "The researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus, which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice." https://slashdot.org/ it appears that a more-relevant name might be Republicanus Fascisti
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
I'm pretty sure I've worked with one of these deuterostomes...
Big mouth... Check.
No anus... Check (I have to assume, considering what came out of the Big Mouth. I did not and will not check).
Sea creature... OK sure, why not.
Well yeah. Every time you spout your cancerous progressive drivel, you're regurgitating waste through your mouth.
... if you go to the Whitehouse, you'll find a big-mouthed land creature who is *all* anus.
Boom, boom, you've been a great audience, I'm here all week :-)
To paraphrase Harlan Ellison, "I have no anus, and I must shit."