What are the earliest ancestors of modern life?
Relatively recent findings in the last 20 years holds that there are three major families or branches on Earth’s tree of life. Depending originally on the presence of a cell nucleus, a first division split the tree into two branches, called the eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The prokaryotes are the bacteria, while eukaryotes are the so-called higher forms of life, including humans, plants and animals. When genetic comparisons became more comprehensive, the third branch called archaea was decided to be sufficiently different to qualify as an independent superkingdom on Earth. A major difference is that eukaryotes put their genes inside a nucleus, while prokaryotes do not. In the archaea, there is no nucleus, but many genes behave like those in higher organisms. Archaea are thought to have a common ancestor with bacteria, but billions of years ago the third domain, eukaryotes, broke off from archaea, eventually developing into plants, animals and us. Archaea include microbes that live at th
Relatively recent findings in the last 20 years holds that there are three major families or branches on Earth’s tree of life. Depending originally on the presence of a cell nucleus, a first division split the tree into two branches, called the eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The prokaryotes are the bacteria, while eukaryotes are the so-called higher forms of life, including humans, plants and animals. When genetic comparisons became more comprehensive, the third branch called archaea was decided to be sufficiently different to qualify as an independent superkingdom on Earth. A major difference is that eukaryotes put their genes inside a nucleus, while prokaryotes do not. In the archaea, there is no nucleus, but many genes behave like those in higher organisms. Archaea are thought to have a common ancestor with bacteria, but billions of years ago the third domain, eukaryotes, broke off from archaea, eventually developing into plants, animals and us. Archaea include microbes that live at th
