Miscellaneous

Last Universal Common Ancestor

August 1 , 2024 14 hrs 0 min 26 0

Researchers are tracing the origins of life on Earth back to a single ancestor that emerged approximately 4.2 billion years ago.
Scientists have pinpointed the emergence of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) by analysing the genomes of present-day organisms.
Earth itself is approximately 4.5 billion years old, indicating life originated when the planet was still in its infancy.
The emergence of oxygen occurred relatively late in the planet's evolutionary timeline, possibly as recent as 3 billion years ago.
Evidence in the form of microbial fossils dates back 3.48 billion years.
LUCA was a complex organism, not too different from modern prokaryotes.
But it possessed an early immune system, showing that even by 4.2 billion years ago.