This Strange Microbe May Mark One of Life's Great Leaps - The New York Times - 0 views
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A bizarre tentacled microbe discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean may help explain the origins of complex life on this planet and solve one of the deepest mysteries in biology, scientists reported on Wednesday.Two billion years ago, simple cells gave rise to far more complex cells. Biologists have struggled for decades to learn how it happened.
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The new species, called Prometheoarchaeum, turns out to be just such a transitional form, helping to explain the origins of all animals, plants, fungi — and, of course, humans. The research was reported in the journal Nature.
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Species that share these complex cells are known as eukaryotes, and they all descend from a common ancestor that lived an estimated two billion years ago.Before then, the world was home only to bacteria and a group of small, simple organisms called archaea. Bacteria and archaea have no nuclei, lysosomes, mitochondria or skeletons
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