Scientists have confirmed that some peculiar ancient fossils are actually distant relatives of humans.
According to the University of Adelaide researchers, the fossils belong to 500-million-year-old blind water creatures which had alien-like in appearance, known to scientists as “vetulicolians.”
More than 100 years since they were first discovered, these marine creatures were “filter-feeders” shaped like a figure-of-8.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum argued for a change in the way these creatures are viewed, placing them with the same group that includes vertebrate animals, such as humans.
Lead author, Dr Diego Garcia-Bellido said that that although they weren’t directly related to humans in the evolutionary line, it can be confirmed that these ancient water creatures were among humans’ distant cousins.
Although the first specimens were studied in 1911, it took until 1997 for the fossils to be described as a group on their own: the vetulicolians. These fossils have now been discovered in countries all across the globe, such as Canada, Greenland, China and Australia.
The latest insights into vetulicolians have come from new fossils discovered on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia, which the researchers named Nesonektris (Greek for “Island Swimmer”).
The findings are published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. (ANI)