- #1
tonyxon22
- 75
- 5
The other day I heard in a documentary that the origin of the first eukaryote cell was due to an unique event in evolution called endosymbiosis, where the basic idea is that two prokaryote cells kind of fused and gave origin to a cell with differentiated organelles. There is a whole theory about this and what seems to be a very complete article about it in Wikipedia.
So my questions regarding this theory are:
1) The documentary mentioned that this was considered a singularity in evolution: it only happened one time and that all the rest of the eukaryote organisms come from this “primordial” cell or singularity. Is that true? How can that be demonstrated? Why couldn’t that happen in several places at the same time.
2) The article in Wikipedia says that estimations suggest that this event happened approximately 1.500 million years ago. In the other hand, life on Earth is believed to appear 3.500 million years ago. So with simple math I come to the conclusion that during the first 2.000 million years, all life in Earth was prokaryotes. Is this correct? How many different species of single-cell organisms existed back then, just before the endosymbiosis event? All the other diversity we see today has developed in only 40% of the time since life first began?
Thanks and best regards,
So my questions regarding this theory are:
1) The documentary mentioned that this was considered a singularity in evolution: it only happened one time and that all the rest of the eukaryote organisms come from this “primordial” cell or singularity. Is that true? How can that be demonstrated? Why couldn’t that happen in several places at the same time.
2) The article in Wikipedia says that estimations suggest that this event happened approximately 1.500 million years ago. In the other hand, life on Earth is believed to appear 3.500 million years ago. So with simple math I come to the conclusion that during the first 2.000 million years, all life in Earth was prokaryotes. Is this correct? How many different species of single-cell organisms existed back then, just before the endosymbiosis event? All the other diversity we see today has developed in only 40% of the time since life first began?
Thanks and best regards,