A tiny fossil, no bigger than a grain of sand, was discovered in China. Paleontologists examined this fossil and named it the Saccorhytus. The Saccorhytus appeared to be a simple, wrinkled sack lined with tiny cones and a giant hole that doesn’t go through. This microorganism was dated to be alive around 540 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion era where multi-celled organisms began to dominate the planet. They have classified this microorganism as the most primitive type of Deuterostomes, a basic species of organisms that gave birth to a vast variety of species. What made the Saccorhytus stand out from the other organisms during that period was the fact that it was shown to be the very first ancestor to our human race. These scientists before had collected microscopical fossils that have been proven to be very old ancestors to our human race, but they believed that the Saccorhytus was the earliest ancestor to our species.

If Deuterostomes were the earliest known ancestors to a vast variety of species today, then how can the paleontologists determine that the Saccorhytus was the earliest known ancestor of our human race? One method to justify their belief was tracing the entire genetic tree. They linked all the fossils of many human ancestors they have discovered before to the genetic tree until they received a linkage to this microorganism. They had indeed found a linkage between our human species to the Saccorhytus. This microorganism also expressed signs of basic human parts. One example was the tiny cones lining the body. Those cones represented the basic gills which represented our respiratory tract. Another indication was the giant hole found on the organism. That giant hole represented our digestive tract; consisting of the mouth, stomach, and anus. Its bilateral symmetry represented our body, while other types of organism closely related to the Deuterostomes were radially symmetrical, which would represent other modern organisms such as the starfish. So far, the Saccorhytus was the only human ancestor without a vertebrate. All the previous fossils discovered had a vertebrate, proving that this organism was the most primitive ancestor discovered.

When it comes to examining organisms as old as the Saccorhytus, the paleontologists claimed that obtaining microscopic fossils was difficult and rare, considering how microscopic organisms were difficult to preserve. Thus, it was uncommon for them to study these kinds of fossils to discover really old ancestors of our human race. When scientists obtain more very ancient microscopic fossils in the future, perhaps they can discover a human ancestor older than the Saccorhytus. For now, the Saccorhytus holds the record of being our oldest ancestor.