US scientists say humans are similar to Earth's first animals

Scientists have discovered similarities between humans and ancient creatures that existed about 500 years ago, Report informs, citing UC Riverside News.

According to a University of California, Riverside study, 555-million-year-old oceanic creatures from the Ediacaran period share genes with today’s animals, including humans.

“None of them had heads or skeletons. Many of them probably looked like three-dimensional bathmats on the seafloor, round discs that stuck up,” said Mary Droser, a geology professor at UCR. “These animals are so weird and so different, it’s difficult to assign them to modern categories of living organisms just by looking at them, and it’s not like we can extract their DNA — we can’t.”

However, well-preserved fossil records have allowed Droser and the study’s first author, recent UCR doctoral graduate Scott Evans, to link the animals’ appearance and likely behaviors to genetic analysis of currently living things.

For their analysis, the researchers considered four animals representative of the more than 40 recognized species that have been identified from the Ediacaran era. These creatures ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly a meter in length.

All four of the animals were multicellular, with cells of different types. Most had symmetry on their left and right sides, as well as noncentralized nervous systems and musculature.

Additionally, they seem to have been able to repair damaged body parts through a process known as apoptosis. The same genes involved are key elements of human immune systems, which helps to eliminate virus-infected and pre-cancerous cells.

“Our work is a way to put these animals on the tree of life, in some respects,” Droser said. “And show they’re genetically linked to modern animals, and to us.”