Meet LUCA: Scientists Discover the Common Ancestor to All Life on Earth | Big Think
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/is-this-where-all-life-on-earth-began
Scientists may have identified the ancestor that started all life and where it lived.
We are talking about LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, also known as the “microbial Eve”.
This is the organism from which all modern cells descended which likely lived underwater
in hydrothermal vents, an area where seawater and magma come together on the ocean floor.
As the researchers say in their paper in “Nature Microbiology” -
“The concept of a last universal common ancestor of all cells (LUCA, or the progenote)
is central to the study of early evolution and life's origin, yet information about
how and where LUCA lived is lacking.”