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I've heard this said many times and believed it, but read to day that the leap from single-cell to multi-cellular organisms happened a dozen or so times indepen
by Emma_Goldman 8y ago
I've heard this said many times and believed it, but read to day that the leap from single-cell to multi-cellular organisms happened a dozen or so times independent of each other. That makes it an order of magnitude less improbable, if true.
- gus_massa 8y agoYep, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism#Occurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism#Occurre... > [...] However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six eukaryotic groups: animals, fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and land plants. It evolved repeatedly for Chloroplastida (green algae and land plants), once or twice for animals, once for brown algae, three times in the fungi (chytrids, ascomycetes and basidiomycetes) and perhaps several times for slime molds and red algae.
- Brockenstein 8y agoLots of things evolved multiple times independently. And while we make a big deal about multi-cellular life, there's still nothing so special about it that that is the one thing that could only have happened once...