Tell the average person they are related to a 1mm creature which lived in the sea bed and resembled a “wrinkled old sack” and they would struggle to see the family resemblance.

A team of British scientists, however, has just announced that this is precisely the description of humanity’s earliest known evolutionary ancestor - a discovery which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “old bag”.

The newly named Saccorhytus Coronarius was a microscopic animal which spent its life “wriggling around” on the ocean floor, according to a new study in the journal Nature.