Scientists have discovered a “lost world” of ancient organisms in billion-year-old rocks from northern Australia.
- Scientists say it could change the world’s understanding of humans’ earliest ancestors.
- The microscopic creatures, known as Protosterol Biota, are part of a family of organisms called eukaryotes and lived in Earth’s waterways about 1.6 billion years ago.
- Eukaryotes have a complex cell structure that includes mitochondria, the cell’s “powerhouse”, and a nucleus, its control and information centre.
- Modern forms of eukaryotes include fungi, plants, animals and single-celled organisms such as amoebae.
- Humans and all other nucleated creatures can trace their ancestral lineage back to the last eukaryotic common ancestors (LECA), which lived more than 1.2 billion years ago.
- Eukaryotes may be either single-celled or multicellular.
- Eukaryotes are differentiated from another class of organisms called prokaryotes by way of the presence of internal membranes that separate parts of the eukaryotic cell from the rest of the cytoplasm.
