Three paleontologists with the Yunnan Institute of Geological Sciences recently discovered a predecessor to the ape, after researching two fish-like chordate samples discovered in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

While studying the specimens collected from Haikou near Kunming, Yunnan's capital, in 1997, paleontologists, Luo Huilin, Hu Shixue and Chen Liangzhong, found two well-preserved chordate fossils dating back some 530 million years.

After further study, they found that the fossils, named the Haikou-huaxia and Zhongxin fishes, were an intermediate form between worms and fish, which had been a blank in the study of evolution, puzzling numerous biologists around the world for more than a century.

The scientists were able to draw a clear chart which demonstrates how the worm eventually evolved into man.

"The earliest form of cephalochordata was the Yunnan Worm. It gradually evolved into the Haikou Worm, then into the Huaxia Fish, Zhongxin Fish, and Kunming Fish, finally becoming the Haikou Fish," said Luo Huilin.

"The possible evolutionary trend of the chordate is as follows: the jawless fish was the earliest form, evolving into the bony fish, then into an amphibious animal, a reptile, and eventually becoming a primitive mammal, of which, one branch evolved into the elephant, and the other into man," he added.

The research findings have been published in the latest issue of Geological Magazine.

British biologist Charles Darwin, author of the Origin of Species, established evolutionism in 1859, but failed to describe life in the period prior to the Cambrian because few fossils had been found from that period.

Darwin knew that if the question of how life began remained unsolved, evolutionism could not be justified.

Paleontologist Hou Xianguang found fossils in Chengjiang in Yunnan Province in 1991 that was later named the Yunnan Worm. Soon after, fossils of Haikou Worm were also found in the province.

These two fossils from the lower vertebrates advanced the history of vertebrates, which include humans, to 15 million years earlier, said paleontologist Chen Junyuan.

Chengjiang attracted the world's attention again in 1999, when two other paleontologists, Shu Degan and Luo Huilin, discovered fossils of the Kunming Fish and the Haikou Fish, both jawless fish.

(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2002)