Last universal common ancestor more complex than previously thought
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 - 10:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Scientists call it LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, but they don't know much about this great-grandparent of all living things. Many believe LUCA was little more than a crude assemblage of molecular parts, a chemical soup out of which evolution gradually constructed more complex forms. Some scientists still debate whether it was even a cell.