Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

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.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.JP. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Suzanne Bard.

Half a billion years ago, there existed a worm-like creature, the size of a grain of rice.

And a new study finds that this animal may have been the first to crawl around the seafloor,

gobble up organic matter at one end, and poop it out the other end.

The creature, dubbed Ikaria Wariudia, was probably one of our oldest relatives.

Akaria is maybe the oldest bilaterian animal that we find in the fossil record.

So this is twice as old or more than things like dinosaurs.

University of California Riverside paleontologist Scott Evans. He says animals like sponges are

even more ancient, but they lack the bilateral symmetry that characterizes most animals today.

So a front and a back and a symmetrical left and right side.

And bilaterians also have an opening for food to go in, an opening for ways to go out,

and a gut connecting them, basically a tube.

And really most animals, you know, everything from insects to mammals to us, those are all

bilaterians that are around today.

Evans and his colleagues discovered the humble creatures in fossil layers from the Ediacra

Hills of South Australia. They used 3D laser scanners from NASA to make high-resolution

images of Ikaria and the surfaces they lived on. The scans confirmed the animal's bilateral

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