Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Was LUCA Our Common Ancestor ???

Scientists think they have discovered Earth's original life form. You can read about it here:

The planet we live on is home to an estimated 10 million species of living organisms. Hard as it may be to fathom, the immense diversity of life we see around us today - from the bacteria living in the garden soil to the majestic blue whale inhabiting the deep blue seas - all evolved from one single-celled ancestor that lived, and died, billions of years ago.

In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology, researchers have described, in unprecedented detail, this Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA, which was only “half alive.” This ancestor - a single-cell, bacterium-like organism - is believed to have existed roughly four billion years ago, when Earth was just over 500 million years old.

LUCA, the researchers say, was the common point of origin for three great domains of life - bacteria, archaea, which are bacteria-like single-cell prokaryotes, and the eukaryotes, a domain that includes all plants and animals.

You can read the rest @
http://www.ibtimes.com/luca-4-billion-year-old-ancestor-all-living-things-earth-2394830

Hmmm ...

No comments:

Post a Comment