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Develops from a solitary founding organism. And not as the Bible claims, it’s not referred to as God or Adam, but actually as LUCA.
It stands for the “Last Universal Common Ancestor,” which scientists reckon was a teeny, weeny, and very basic organism.
They reckon that this single-cell life form was the ancestor of everything from tiny bacteria to the mightiest of creatures. And now, a brand new study has discovered that LUCA’s age has blown experts’ theories right out of the water.
For years, researchers have estimated that LUCA emerged on our planet around 4 billion years ago – only 600 million years after the earth was formed.
We reckon our ancestor had a presence here long before that,
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The global team of experts, from the UK, Netherlands, Hungary and Japan, explained that they had to “work backwards” to pinpoint the exact moment when LUCA emerged on our planet.
To do this, they compared the genes in living species, and counted the mutations that have occurred since they all sprouted from a single common ancestor (LUCA).
“They reckon that LUCA, the common ancestor of all life on Earth, must’ve been hanging around since about 400 million years after it formed,” the researchers said.
This puts the organism “smack bang in the middle of the hellish geologic nightmare known as the Hadean Eon.”
The Hadean Eon, named after Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, was the unofficial time period that began with Earth’s formation.
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The fact LUCA was able to endure such conditions is seriously impressive, and so the researchers were keen to figure out how this was possible.
They wrapped up that LUCA, a single-celled microorganism without a nucleus or any membrane-bound structures, was almost certainly a prokaryote. It probably had a defence system, which would’ve allowed it to ward off ancient viruses.
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“Fair dinkum, its waste would’ve been a bonzer feed for other microbes like methanogens, and they’d’ve helped set up a recycled ecosystem as a result.”
But, although LUCA is our oldest confirmed ancestor, scientists are still trying to figure out how complex life originated from its beginnings
Gotta keep diggin’ deeper to uncover the secrets of our ancient past and figure out exactly how as humans and the incredible world we live in came to be.
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