A creature that may have skimmed shorelines roughly 540 million years ago was a real oddball. Dozens of peculiar, roundish fossils discovered in what is now southern China represent the earliest known deuterostomes, a gigantic category of creatures that includes everything from humans to sea cucumbers. No bigger than a pinhead, the fossils have wrinkly, baglike bodies and mouths that are pleated around the edges like an accordion, researchers report in the Feb. 9 Nature.
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