The discovery changes what we know about the origin of life on Earth.

A study by scientists at the University of Bristol in the UK has revealed some surprising information about life on Earth. According to the team, the last universal common ancestor – also known as LUCA (short for last universal common ancestor) from which all living organisms on planet Earth descend, appeared 4.2 billion years ago.

Understands:

• Scientists suggest that life on Earth may have appeared 4.2 billion years ago;
• The discovery came after analyzing the separation of lineages from the last universal common ancestor – also known as LUCA;
• To put it in perspective, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This means that life appeared when the planet was still very young;
• According to the team, LUCA was similar to prokaryotes, did not rely on oxygen to survive and may have produced acetate;
• The researchers also suggest that “life may thrive in Earth-like biospheres elsewhere in the universe.”
• The study was published in Nature and Evolution Environment.

“We didn’t expect LUCA to be so old, just a few hundred million years after Earth formed. Our findings fit with modern views on the possibility of habitability on the early Earth,” says Sandra Alvarez-Carretero, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bristol. statement.

When did life appear on Earth?

When the Earth was young, it was a very different place than it is today. The atmosphere, for example, would be too toxic for life as we know it. Oxygen, which is vital to all of us, did not appear until relatively late in the planet’s evolutionary history—about 3 billion years ago.

But life arose before all this: There are fossils of microbes dating back about 3.5 billion years. And scientists think that conditions on Earth may have been stable enough to support life about 4.3 billion years ago.

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The discovery could point to life in Earth-like environments.

For study – recently published in Nature and Evolution Environment The team relied on molecular clock technology that allows estimating the timing of lineage separation events. Using this data, the researchers were able to calculate how much time had passed since the divergence of the LUCA descendants began.

The team also determined that LUCA was very similar to prokaryotes, single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus. The ancestor did not rely on oxygen to survive, and its metabolism probably produced acetate.

“This discovery shows how quickly ecosystems could have been established on early Earth,” adds paleontologist Philip Donoghue. “It suggests that life may have flourished in Earth-like biospheres elsewhere in the universe.”