More amusing evolutionary mythology from our finest scientific minds.

[Wolseley]

Holy Scripture states that the first human being was Adam, who was created directly by God. Science (drum roll, trumpet flourish) however, sniffs at such simple-minded nonsense. Science states that a lightning bolt hitting a gob of snot lying in a mud puddle four billion years ago magically caused said gob of snot to evolve into giraffes, whales, hyenas, iguanas, flatworms, Covid-19, and yes, even you and me.

And now, Science (the same fine folks who brought to you Piltdown Man and deceased peppered moths glued to trees) has even given said gob of snot a name: ladies and gentlemen, your original ancestor was LUCA:

This acronym stands for the “Last Universal Common Ancestor,” which scientists believe was a tiny, and very basic, organism. They think that this single-cell being was the forefather from the smallest of bacteria to the biggest of beasts.

Betcha didn't know that your Aunt Mildred was related to the squirmies wriggling around in the tubs down at the bait shop, didja? Well, read on:

For years, researchers have estimated that LUCA emerged on our planet some 4 billion years ago – just 600 million years after the world’s formation. The international team of authors, based in the UK, Netherlands, Hungary and Japan, said they had to “work backwards” to “zero in on exactly when LUCA appeared on Earth.”

"Appeared", did it? Just out of nowhere? Oh, wait---not, it must have been aliens. Or asteroids. Right. Okay; onwards we go.

“Using a genetic equation based on the time of separation between species, the team worked out that LUCA must’ve been mucking around on Earth as early as 400 million years after its creation,” the researchers explained.

"After its creation"??? I thought they didn't believe in creation? If it was created, then it was created by whom? And how? (Yes, I know about the lightning bolt. Our little gob of goo was just lying there, totally dormant, until Reddy Kilowatt came along and poof! turned on all the little gizmos that set it free to start growing fuzz that eventually became an elephant. Sure.)

They concluded that whilst LUCA was a simple prokaryote (a single-cell organism whose cell lacks a nucleus and other membrane-bound structures), it likely had an immune system. This enabled it to fight off primordial viruses.

Now, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute---if LUCA was the very first "living" organism that appeared on our nascent planet, where did these viruses come from??? Were they already here to begin with, like Keith Richards and George Soros, before LUCA even showed up? Then how could LUCA have been the first living organism? Or did LUCA evolve a bunch of viruses because it was bored and needed something fight with?

“It’s clear that LUCA was exploiting and changing its environment, but it is unlikely to have lived alone,” Tim Lenton, of the University of Exteter, who co-authored the study, said in a statement. “Its waste would have been food for other microbes, like methanogens, that would have helped to create a recycling ecosystem.”

LUCA was here first, but encountered viruses, microbes, methanogens? "Captain, we appear to be taking on water....this ship is full of so many holes, we could use it for a colander."

Nevertheless, although LUCA is our oldest established common ancestor, scientists are still trying to work out how complex life evolved from its origins.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Further work must now be done to dig deeper into our primordial history and discover how exactly we, and the extraordinary world around us, came to be.

It's amazing that they actually swallow this stuff. It takes just as much, if not more, complete blind faith to believe this nonsense as it does to accept that idea that a Supreme Being created the whole works out of nothing. But, let them have their fun. If it gives them a sense of comfort to think they have it all worked out, goody for them.

MSN