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Prochlorococcus, an influential marine cyanobacterium which produces much of the world's oxygen. Cyanobacteria are globally widespread photosynthetic prokaryotes and are major contributors to global biogeochemical cycles. [ 25 ] They are the only oxygenic photosynthetic prokaryotes, and prosper in diverse and extreme habitats. [ 26 ]
The evolution of bacteria has progressed over billions of years since the Precambrian time with their first major divergence from the archaeal / eukaryotic lineage roughly 3.2-3.5 billion years ago. [ 1 ][ 2 ] This was discovered through gene sequencing of bacterial nucleoids to reconstruct their phylogeny.
Last universal common ancestor. The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the hypothesized common ancestral cell from which the three domains of life, the Bacteria, the Archaea, and the Eukarya originated. The cell had a lipid bilayer; it possessed the genetic code and ribosomes which translated from DNA or RNA to proteins.
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable ...
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
A new analysis of three-toed fossil footprints that date back more than 210 million years reveals that they were created by bipedal reptiles with feet like a bird’s.
The earliest known life forms on Earth may be as old as 4.1 billion years (or Ga) according to biologically fractionated graphite inside a single zircon grain in the Jack Hills range of Australia. [2] The earliest evidence of life found in a stratigraphic unit, not just a single mineral grain, is the 3.7 Ga metasedimentary rocks containing ...
c. 315 Ma – The evolution of the first reptiles. c. 312 Ma – Hylonomus makes first appearance, one of the oldest reptiles found in the fossil record. c. 306 Ma – Diplocaulus evolves in the swamps with an unusual boomerang-like skull. c. 305 Ma – First diapsids evolve; Meganeura, a giant dragonfly dominates the skies.