Imagine the tree of life. The tip of every branch represents one species, and if you follow any two branches back through time, you'll hit an intersection. If you keep going back in time, you'll eventually find the common ancestor for all of life. That ancestor is called LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, and there is no fossil record to tell us what it looked like. Luckily, we have Jonathan Lambert. He's a science correspondent for NPR and today he's talking all things LUCA: What we think this single-celled organism may have looked like, when it lived and why a recent study suggests it could be older and more complex than scientists thought. Have other questions about ancient biology? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.In a previous version of this episode, we said that the research team used carbon-dated fossils to calibrate a molecular clock aimed at estimating the age of LUCA. In fact, the researchers used radio isotopic-dated fossils for that purpose.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air contributor Anne-Marie Baldonado. I talked with actor Cole Escola about their hit Broadway play, Oh Mary. Cole plays an unhinged alcoholic Mary Todd Lincoln, who's an aspiring cabaret performer. If that makes no sense, that's part of the point. You can find my interview on the Fresh Air podcast.
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, short ravers, Emily Kwong here with a story about your ancestors, but not your grandparents and not your great grandparents, nor your great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents.
No, we're talking about the ancestor of all life.
All life. And you're just the right person to talk about this with us, Jonathan Lambert, because before your current stint on the NPR Science Desk, you wrote about this ancestor for Quantum Magazine. Is this where all living things descended from?
Yes. So they call it LUCA, which stands for the last universal common ancestor, which is no longer alive, but it would have existed billions of years ago as some kind of single-celled organism.
When you say last universal common ancestor, what does that mean?
So imagine for a second the tree of life.
All life.
Yeah. So everything. Yeah. So let's start at the branches. Every living thing on Earth is represented as a tip on the branch of that tree.
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