Biology

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

submitted 5 days ago by cm0002@literature.cafe to c/biology@mander.xyz

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[–] showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

it's ~twice the time between us and our last common ancestor with platypuses (160mya) That’s a good point and it really puts deep time in perspective. But it still points the no life / life transition being extremely easy? Doesn’t it? In two to three hundred myas we had a jump from barren hell scape to single cell life. That makes if look like life must be pretty easy to get started or am I missing something? Not a biologist so I suspect I’m missing something.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

I'm not a biologist either, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

But it still points the no life / life transition being extremely easy? Doesn’t it?

Perhaps so, provided the conditions are suitable for that.

In special, going from free-floating to contained self-replicating junk seems to be a damn big leap, since the containment (aka membrane) needs to be selective: it needs to let some material to go in/out to allow replication and get rid of leftovers, but not enough to threat the integrity of the structure.

It was still most likely a hellscape for our standards, though. Just not a barren one.