What’s more, every living organism is ultimately descended from a single ancestral population: the Last Universal Common Ancestor (Luca), which lived over 3.5 billion years ago when the planet was newly formed.

Luca is now usually placed deep underground, in a fissure in hot igneous rocks, where she fed on sulphur, iron, hydrogen and carbon.

It was around 2.9 billion years ago that LUCA split into the three domains of life: the single-celled bacteria and archaea, and the more complex eukaryotes that gave rise to animals and plants[…].

Luca

Meaning

Noun

Name

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