Right, so I read the study instead of the article. Good idea. It's simply that the popsci article claims something that isn't the original study. The article do

Right, so I read the study instead of the article. Good idea. It's simply that the popsci article claims something that isn't the original study. The article does argue for evolution before life[0], and the study doesn't claim that at all. Either Salon simply misunderstood the study, or spiced it up so that aggregators like HN would pick it up. [0] "So by testing which libraries had the best solubility and structure, the researchers could conclude that proteins were evolving and driving natural selection before even forming living things."