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Scientists have found the "earliest known" ancestor of humans, and it had no need of an anus:
Researchers have discovered the earliest known ancestor of humans - along with a vast range of other species. They say that fossilised 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 [DOI: 10.1038/nature21072] [DX] 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 millimetre in size, and is thought to have lived between grains of sand on the sea bed.
Also at St John's College Cambridge.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:46AM
But the researchers were unable to find any evidence that the creature had an anus. “If that was the case, then any waste material would simply have been taken out back through the mouth, which from our perspective sounds rather unappealing,” Conway Morris said.
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Yup, they've found a direct ancestor of Trump.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:57AM
I was about to ask if it had blond hairs, and then I saw your comment, well done.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:19AM
Good one. That's some quality funny there.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday February 01 2017, @06:02AM
But the researchers were unable to find any evidence that the creature had an anus. “If that was the case, then any waste material would simply have been taken out back through the mouth,
Demodex folliculorum lives and dies in the pores of your skin without ever excreting waste. When the body decomposes the shit is left behind. This seems like a simpler way of handling things, if a shorter lived one. I wonder if there was something that made this possibility doubtful for the proposed first common ancestor fossil, such as cavity volume.