Oldest Deuterostomes Push Humans’ Invertebrate Kin Back to the Ediacaran
New fossils from China’s Jiangchuan biota (about 554–539 million years ago) reveal the oldest deuterostomes—our invertebrate relatives—closely tied to cambroernids, suggesting complex animals, including lineages related to humans, existed in the late Ediacaran and persisted toward the Cambrian explosion, expanding the timeline of early animal evolution.