All Life on Earth Comes From One Single Ancestor

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA.
• A study suggests that this organism likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after its formation.
• Further analysis also shows that this life form likely sported an early immune system, which means it was probably fighting off viruses.

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.

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