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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.
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!"
Pretty sure that guy sits a few cubes over.
NT
No, he is definitely all mouth, since that is where all the shit is coming out.
The evidence for why some people talk out of their anus.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
Done.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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
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.
nah. They're total assholes.
Have gnu, will travel.
researchers discovered a complete anus with a mouth at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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).
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In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
News flash: assholes exist across the political spectrum. No matter what side you're on, rise above them.
That is all.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
My mistake. I stand corrected.
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.
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"?
It's much more accurate to say this creature was clearly from the time before politics in general was invented.
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."
All mouth
Oh, you mean like this?
... assholes appeared only in recent times. Back then creatures were more civilized.
It's Pac-Man
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.
It certainly had to be from a time before politicians if they couldn't find an asshole.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why?
At least read the summary, it clearly said NO ASSHOLE.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But lots and lots of dicks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
Looks like his detractors are fare more triggered than his supporters.
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!"
A quick study of most politicians shows that the mouth probably served both functions....
To paraphrase Harlan Ellison, "I have no anus, and I must shit."