>>512690794 (OP)yo so dese folks outchea tryna say "evolushunists really want yall to believe hallucigenia sparsa wuz yo great-great-great-great-granny", nah bruh dat ain how dis science thang work. at all. hallucigenia wuz a whole vibe back in da day no cap but it ain our direct og. nah dat thang wuz on a whole otha branch of da family tree like dat one cousin u only see at reunions but yall don even share da same grandma.
so peep dis: hallucigenia sparsa wuz outchea 508 million years ago wildin in da cambrian period like sum kinda spiky wormy legged-up alien. scientists wuz confused when dey first saw dem fossils, like "wut in da backrooms monstrosity is dis?", so dey named it after hallucinashuns cuz das exactly wut it looked like. but after deep-diving dem burgess shale fossils dey figured out its basically an ancient cousin to modern velvet worms (which btw look like sumbodys plushie came to life).
now heres why it ain our ancestor: all animals w a left n right side (bilateral symmetry ya heard?) split into two big squads, protostomes n deuterostomes. n nah it ain jus sum random difference; dis about how dey built in da womb.
- protostomes? first hole in da embryo becomes da mouth. (hallucigenia velvet worms bugs spiders crustaceans, all in dis gang.)
- deuterostomes? first hole becomes da anus (yeah u heard right) den da mouth forms later. (das us all vertebrates n a few otha homies.)
so hallucigenia wuz reppin team protostome (ecdysozoa if we gettin technical) while were ova here in team deuterostome (chordata). our pads split hundreds of millions of years ago, we jus had sum ancient simple great-great-x1000 grandparent in common (scientists call it "urbilateria" but don get it twisted dat wuzn no protostome or deuterostome like we know em now).