
All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Ancestor - pg
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59133/title/All_present-day_life_arose_from_a_single_origin
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pcof
We could call her Bacteria Zero and build a whole religion around her life and
times...

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ZenzerNet
Deus Ex Bacteria. Shirley, this ancestor could be referred to as "God".

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latortuga
Truly the father (mother?) of all life!

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altano
Ohhh, occasion to post my favorite first line of a book the second time in so
many days! Neal Stephenson, first line of chapter 1 of Cryptonomicon:

"Let's set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and just
stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on
this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by
spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct
means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their
genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way
to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes
zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV
was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational
preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the
earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat
narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of
slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-
replicating gizmo--which, given the number and variety of its descendants,
might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time.
Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."

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mkramlich
this was covered on The Onion already last week:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-
des...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-descendants-
of-single-smoo,2762/)

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DanielBMarkham
But even more likely was single-ancestor with some gene mingling. So a bit of
both.

Seems like a bit of a false dichotomy going on here as this is a "degree of"
question and not an either-or question (If I understood the article correctly)

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LeBleu
No, it is two different dichotomies. One is one-ancestor vs. multi-ancestor,
with the first being correct. The second is no gene transfer between
descendants vs. gene transfer between descendants, with the second being
correct. So there was only one species to begin with, but then later, after it
diverged into multiple species, those branches traded genes back and forth.

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Alex3917
"So there was only one species to begin with"

The idea that all life shares a common ancestor does not mean that there was
only one species to begin with. There could have been many species who
contributed genetic material to a common ancestor, and then eventually died
out. The article is poorly written because it doesn't make it clear whether
the gene swapping occurred before or after the common ancestor.

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DanielBMarkham
I went back and re-read the article.

I took it at first to mean common ancestor in terms of a single ancestor for a
particular species. But then you guys seem to think it means a common ancestor
for all life.

I found it confusing. Meta: I have no idea why my comment was voted down so
much. I did not understand it, and I still do not. Seems like an admission of
that along with an explanation from other commenters would be a good thing,
right? Saying I don't know and having people help me -- reason for the board,
or not?

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Alex3917
I have no idea what's up with comment moderation, but it's clearly been going
downhill. It's probably best to just ignore it.

