LIFE · 생명

3.8 billion years, one unbroken thread

Everything alive today came from a single ancestor. You are one leaf on a 3.8-billion-year-old tree.

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What you will see

• LUCA — ancestor of all — 3.8 billion years ago. The single common ancestor of everything alive. The oak, the mushroom, and you all branch from here.
• The Cambrian explosion — Almost every animal phylum appears in a geological instant. Eyes evolve, predation begins. A great turning point.
• Extinction #3 — the Great Dying — 252 million years ago. About 96% of marine species gone — the largest extinction ever. Life nearly ended.
• Extinction #5 — the asteroid — 66 million years ago a 10 km asteroid falls. The non-avian dinosaurs are gone; mammals inherit the empty world.
• You — Homo sapiens — 300,000 years ago, one leaf opens at the tip of this tree. 0.008% of a 3.8-billion-year story. You are one twig — the oak, the mushroom, the whale, the bacteria in your gut are all your cousins.

Common questions

Why is most of it microbial?
Of 3.8 billion years, complex animals have existed for only the last 600 million. The other 3.2 billion years — about 85% — were the age of invisible single cells.

How recent are humans?
Homo sapiens’ 300,000 years are 0.008% of 3.8 billion. If the whole scroll were a single day, humans appear in the last 0.2 seconds before midnight.

Is every organism really related?
Yes. From bacteria to you, life uses the same genetic code (codons), carries energy with the same ATP, and builds membranes on the same principle. It is evidence of one ancestor: LUCA.

How many species are there?
About 2 million are recorded; an estimated 8.7 million exist. Including microbes, some studies reach up to a trillion. We still do not know most of them.

Does it work on mobile?
Yes. The scale stays identical; only the presentation changes.

About this site

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