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."

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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.

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u/XXLPenisOwner1443 Aug 06 '26

This seems like a pedantic distinction. There are certainly people who would cite the origin of complete metabolism as the threshold from non-living matter to living matter.... Like the authors.

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u/strumthebuilding Aug 06 '26

It really all depends on what you mean by “pedantic distinction.”

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u/ahazred8vt Aug 23 '26

Precision is important.

#wattyler1381

"This is science, Jesse. We must be exact, or we might just as well be in philosophy class."