Everyone on Earth shares the same single ancestor – and no, it's not Adam

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Variety is the ultimate key to beauty – just take a squiz around you and you’ll see.

It comes from a single parent. And in contrast to what the Bible states, its name is actually LUCA.

This acronym stands for the "Last Universal Common Ancestor," which scientists think was a tiny, and very simple, organism.

They're of the opinion that this single-celled organism was the forebear from the tiny bacteria to the largest of wild animals. And now, a new study's discovered that LUCA is even older than initially thought.

For years, researchers have estimated that LUCA (the last universal common ancestor) originated on our planet about four billion years ago – roughly 600 million years after the Earth came into being.

indicates our ancestor was around even before that.

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The international team of authors, based in the UK, Netherlands, Hungary and Japan, said they had to "work backwards" to "zero in on exactly when the common ancestor of all life on Earth appeared."

They compared the chromosomes in all living species and counted the number of genetic mutations that have occurred since they all shared a common ancestor, known as LUCA.

“Using a genetic equation based on the time of separation between species, the team reckons LUCA must’ve been going about its business on Earth as far back as 400 million years after its creation,” the researchers said.

This drops the organism straight into the midst of the fiery, hellish world of the Hadean Eon era.

The Hadean Eon, named after Hades, the Greek god who ruled the underworld, was the unofficial era that started off with the formation of the Earth.

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The fact that LUCA was able to survive in a harsh environment is certainly impressive, and so the researchers aimed to figure out how this was possible.

They concluded that while LUCA was a basic single-cell organism that didn't have a nucleus or membrane-bound bits, it probably had an immune system that helped it deal with primordial viruses.

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The waste would have gone straight into becoming a feed for the methanogens microbes, helping to make a recycling ecosystem.

Still, despite LUCA being our most ancient common ancestor that's widely accepted by scientists, researchers are still trying to figure out how life became more complex from its origins.

Further work needs to be done to uncover more about our ancient past and discover how it is that we, and the remarkable world around us, came to be.

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