ArticleNature ecology & evolution2018
Integrated genomic and fossil evidence illuminates life's early evolution and eukaryote origin.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 170 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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170 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 439 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Re-evaluating molecular clock maximum age calibrations revives pre-Ediacaran divergence estimates for animals.Science advances · 2026Article
- Conserved and divergent mitochondrial assemblies in kinetoplastid parasites.Molecular cell · 2026Article
- Environmental phylogenetics supports a steady diversification of crown eukaryotes starting from the mid-Proterozoic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Early fossil eukaryotes were benthic aerobes.Nature · 2026Article
- Replicating lipid micelles: a feasible precursor to the origin of life and the earliest appearance of genomes.Human genomics · 2026Review
- Abiotic sources of fixed nitrogen sustained early ecosystems for several hundred million years after the origin of life.Science advances · 2026Article
- A protein interactome for the last eukaryotic common ancestor illuminates the biochemical basis of modern genetic diseases.Cell genomics · 2026Article
- Evolutionary acquisition of an interaction between conserved proteins drives plant-specific cell cycle progression.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Redox chemistry of early Earth and the origin of life.Communications chemistry · 2026Review
- Strong nickel enrichment co-located with redox-organic interactions in Neretva Vallis, Mars.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Universal paralogs provide a window into evolution before the last universal common ancestor.Cell genomics · 2026Review
- Three-dimensional reconstruction of ediacaran ceramiales (Rhodophyta) from the phosphorite doushantuo formation, South China.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Molecular clock dating using complex mixture models: applied to ancient symbionts.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Molecular mechanisms of mitochondrial AAA+ proteases.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2026Review
- Article
- Reactive oxygen species drove red lineage phytoplankton to displace green lineage phytoplankton during the Mesozoic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history.Science advances · 2026Article
- Protein Architecture Comparisons and the Reconstruction of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA).Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
110 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Establishing a unified timescale for the early evolution of Earth and life is challenging and mired in controversy because of the paucity of fossil evidence, the difficulty of interpreting it and dispute over the deepest branching relationships in the tree of life. Surprisingly, it remains perhaps the only episode in the history of life where literal interpretations of the fossil record hold sway, revised with every new discovery and reinterpretation. We derive a timescale of life, combining a reappraisal of the fossil material with new molecular clock analyses. We find the last universal common ancestor of cellular life to have predated the end of late heavy bombardment (>3.9 billion years ago (Ga)). The crown clades of the two primary divisions of life, Eubacteria and Archaebacteria, emerged much later (<3.4 Ga), relegating the oldest fossil evidence for life to their stem lineages. The Great Oxidation Event significantly predates the origin of modern Cyanobacteria, indicating that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved within the cyanobacterial stem lineage. Modern eukaryotes do not constitute a primary lineage of life and emerged late in Earth's history (<1.84 Ga), falsifying the hypothesis that the Great Oxidation Event facilitated their radiation. The symbiotic origin of mitochondria at 2.053-1.21 Ga reflects a late origin of the total-group Alphaproteobacteria to which the free living ancestor of mitochondria belonged.
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