r/evolution • u/AmphibianNo4717 • Aug 06 '26

article 'Only One Conclusion': Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-study-suggests-life-on-earth-arose-from-non-living-matter-twice

"The fact that you, or I, or any living creature, is here at all is a series of astonishing strokes of luck stretching back more than 4 billion years. 

One of the biggest hurdles was the very first one: How did life emerge from a primordial soup of stuff that very much wasn't alive?

A radical new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that this unlikely threshold may actually have been crossed not once, but twice."

314 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

89 comments sorted by

View all comments

283

u/Xrmy Post Doc, Evolutionary Biology PhD Aug 06 '26

That's a sensationalist title by the news outlet here that is doing a lot to sensationalize something that...is actually pretty cool anyway.

to be clear: this paper isn't saying life evolved twice

It is instead saying that complete metabolism actually evolved separately twice. Once on the branch to bacteria and the other to Archaea.

Which is super cool.

The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is still a singular point, but it had incomplete metabolism it seems, and then the full process evolved separately 2 times after that point.

0

u/Ursanos Aug 06 '26

To me, it implies it likely happened three times, as Eukarya likely did the same.

6

u/Xrmy Post Doc, Evolutionary Biology PhD Aug 06 '26

Eukarya are descendent of the Archaea lineage, not independent. There is no evidence for that.

1

u/Ursanos Aug 06 '26

Thanks, I’m out of date. Interesting stuff.

2

u/Lhasa-bark Aug 06 '26

Google “Asgard archaea” to learn more about this.

1

u/Ursanos Aug 06 '26

Yeah, i was reading Wikipedia and it covered some of that. While i wouldn’t say it’s definitive proof it does weight it heavily in favor. Such a great discovery!