205

All Life on Earth Comes From One Single Ancestor. And It's So Much Older Than We Thought. (www.popularmechanics.com)

submitted 4 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/science@lemmy.world

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 10 points 4 months ago

No, since everything we know about the LUCA is from its descendants. Microorganisms without descendants wouldn’t leave behind any evidence of their existence.

[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

Using genetics alone, sure. But maybe there’s fossil or geochemical evidence of early organisms not belonging to any of the three surviving domains—or maybe we could estimate it just from statistics.