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bascule described it as "a poll of several nations which asked if humans share a common ancestor with all other life on earth".

 

If this really had been the question' date=' I would have been inclined to say 'not sure' because I don't know whether [b']all[/b] other life on Earth comes from the same abiogenesis event. (It probably does, but I don't think I would say it does without more evidence - there could be some obscure silicon based life living in a volcano for example.)

 

Good point. There could even still be some microbe that came from among the pool of microbes that lived long ago. Also, since it has been shown that microbes exchange genes via lateral gene transfer, itis not clear even yet whether there was a SINGLE species of single-celled organism that was THE common ancestor. It's possible there were 2 or more and they exchanged genetic material. OTOH, the evidence from the genetic code argues very strongly for a single common ancestor.

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