Scientists have rewritten the history of life on Earth with a new estimate for the age of LUCA, or the Last Universal Common Ancestor, who is generally acknowledged as the common ancestor of all living things, thanks to a ground-breaking study.
The study, which was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, indicates that LUCA lived approximately 4.2 billion years ago, which is significantly closer to Earth's origin than previously thought.
LUCA, a common ancestor to all organisms and not the first life form, has been a controversial topic among scientists for centuries. Life fossil evidence goes back as far as 3.4 billion years, yet this study proposes that LUCA might be close to being the same age as the Earth. The genetic code and DNA replication, which are two of the vital biological processes, might have developed almost immediately after the planet was formed. READ MORE...
Life on Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. True to its name, this prokaryote-like organism represents the ancestor of every living thing, from the tiniest of bacteria to the grandest of blue whales.
While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation.
But a new study from an international team of scientists pushes that timeline back even further to some 4.2 billion years ago, while also discovering some fascinating details about what life for LUCA might’ve been like. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. READ MORE...
