Meet The Saccorhytus: Humanity’s Oldest Ancestor Had A Huge Mouth, No Anus And Looked Like A Shapeless Sack – Sound Familiar? [Opinion]

Scientists have published a study confirming that humanity’s oldest ancestor lived 540 million years ago and was a hideous wriggling specimen which lived in the sea and had no anus but boasted a huge mouth.

It was called the Saccorhytus and looked something like a shapeless sack which had been kicked about a bit by the more evolved ocean critters.

Let’s be honest. The word Saccorhytus doesn’t sound all that nice.

In fact, it drips off the tongue like liquid bacteria, and sounds like something with the potential to effortlessly bridge the murky area between a sexually transmitted disease and a tropical virus in a matter of minutes.

Apparently the Saccorhytus was “us” before evolution really began to flex its muscles and go for gold. Or in other words, before mankind as a collective learned how to slither, crawl, walk, stumble and fall.

If the Saccorhytus doesn’t sound pleasant, it looks even worse. Imagine a shapeless sack of a sea creature which wriggles like an excitable worm and has no anus but a really big mouth, and you have our ancestor. At least according to the boffins who make it their business to know about such things.

From humble beginnings great things are achieved. Still, it doesn’t sit all that well in the stomach to think the symphonies of Mozart, the sonnets of Shakespeare, and the artistry of Van Gogh all had the seeds of their genesis in a hideous looking jellyfish with no anus.

The Mirror reports that the microscopic species is prehistoric and its existence was identified from microfossils found in China.

Detailed findings on mankind’s ultimate father figure have been published in the journal Nature.

Think of the following as researching a family tree about your oldest known relative.

It’s believed that our great grandpa was about a millimeter in size and lived an uncomplicated life nestled between grains of sand on the sea bed.

The waves came in and the waves went out, but for the Saccorhytus, it was all much of a muchness. They got around the place through the power of wriggling alone and philosophical contemplation wasn’t high on the agenda.

The defining feature of our great ancestor was its huge mouth and lack of any anus. Which may seem like a terrible contradiction.

Were the seeds of humanity sown in a creature quite literally full of sh*t? You might well ask.

Not quite. The study demonstrated that the Saccorhytus probably ate by engulfing food particles or other creatures, and any waste product would be expelled from the system in much the same way it entered – via the mouth.

It sounds gross and Simon Conway Morris, of the University of Cambridge agrees.

“Any waste material would simply have been taken out back through the mouth, which from our perspective sounds rather unappealing.”

Yet grotesque as it may be, scientists are excited by this discovery and believe that the origin of the species can be traced all the way back to this shapeless little fellow with the massive mouth which spewed forth a constant stream of sh*t.

“We think that as an early deuterostome this may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves.

“To the naked eye, the fossils we studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail is jaw-dropping.

“All deuterostomes had a common ancestor, and we think that is what we are looking at here.

“Saccorhytus now gives us remarkable insights into the very first stages of the evolution of a group that led to the fish, and ultimately, to us.”

Some wise guy commentator wrote, “It’s Donald Trump’s daddy.” But dude, the joke’s on you. The Saccorhytus is a father figure to us all.

[Featured Image by Mario Tama/Getty Images]