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Common Ancestor of All Cellular Life on Earth Emerged Very Early in Planet?s History | Genetics, Paleontology | Sci-News.com
New research from the Universities of Bristol and Bath suggests life originated on our planet a lot earlier than previously thought.
The fossil record of early life is extremely fragmented, and its quality significantly deteriorates further back in time towards the Archean eon, more than 2.5 billion years ago, when the Earth’s crust had cooled enough to allow the formation of continents and the only life forms were microbes.
Now University of Bristol researcher Holly Betts and colleagues have used a combination of genomic and fossil data to explain the history of life on Earth, from its origin to the present day.
===============================================
Using different approaches, the scientists were able to estimate that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of cellular life appeared nearly 4.5 billion years ago. This was almost immediately after the formation of the Earth which is estimated to be 4.543 billion years.
New research from the Universities of Bristol and Bath suggests life originated on our planet a lot earlier than previously thought.
The fossil record of early life is extremely fragmented, and its quality significantly deteriorates further back in time towards the Archean eon, more than 2.5 billion years ago, when the Earth’s crust had cooled enough to allow the formation of continents and the only life forms were microbes.
Now University of Bristol researcher Holly Betts and colleagues have used a combination of genomic and fossil data to explain the history of life on Earth, from its origin to the present day.
===============================================
Using different approaches, the scientists were able to estimate that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of cellular life appeared nearly 4.5 billion years ago. This was almost immediately after the formation of the Earth which is estimated to be 4.543 billion years.