aka the "last universal common ancestor." this is so cool, at least as an idea, though apparently they have not actually found it.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/11883459.htm
WASHINGTON - Thanks to the tools of modern genetics, scientists are working to identify a little bug that they believe was the ancestor of every creature alive today.
They call it LUCA -- shorthand for the ``last universal common ancestor'' -- and they think it inhabited the Earth 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.
LUCA consisted of only a single cell, like a bacterium, scientists say, but its descendants comprise modern humans, animals, plants, fungi and invisible microbes.
``Amazingly, every living thing we see around us, and many more that we can only see with the aid of a microscope, is related,'' said Anthony Poole, a molecular biologist at Stockholm University in Sweden.
― Maria (Maria), Monday, 13 June 2005 20:36 (twenty years ago)
if everything is related they should all get invites to ally's wedding!!
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 13 June 2005 21:57 (twenty years ago)
Fuck those prokaryotes and their tiny little genomes and their I'm-the-foundation-of-all-life pretensions. I trace my ancestry back to the first eukaryotes and no further.
― Aimless (Aimless), Monday, 13 June 2005 23:32 (twenty years ago)