A recent research paper suggests that terrestrial-style biology may be rare, and Earth may be among the first examples of a planet able to sustain life in the cosmos. Even as the new kids on the block, humans are seemingly one of the precious few instances of intelligence to arise in the universe since the Big Bang.
Scientific studies tell us that human beings have been around for some time now. But we are not nearly the oldest living species still around today. Although it can be hard to tell exactly how old some species are, scientists are confident that they still haven't uncovered nearly all the fossils that could be found. Most scientists agree that the oldest living species still around today is the horseshoe crab.
According to scientific research, the horseshoe crab that still exists today has been around mostly unchanged since the Ordovician period which is about 445 million years ago.
If that doesn't sound incredible to you, think of it this way. The oldest multicellular animals found in fossils date back about 600 million years. Most species of animals usually only last a few million years. For example, the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex only existed for about three million years. Our species, Homo sapiens, has been around a mere 250,000 years!
The horseshoe crab, on the other hand, has been around for about 450 million years. That's about three-fourths of the entire time that animals have existed on Earth. That's incredible! Scientists believe its simple but effective immune system may be responsible for its longevity.
Even older fossils of familiar creatures have been found. For example, scientists have found extremely old fossils of the nautilus (500 million years old), jellyfish (550 million years old), and sponge (760 million years old).
These simple creatures existed even before the horseshoe crab, and they still exist today. However, their modern forms have evolved and aren't the exact species of the ancient fossilized forms that scientists have found. Nevertheless, the nautilus, jellyfish, and sponge can claim to have ancient roots…and scientists believe there are probably even older fossils that haven't yet been discovered!
Why is then humans evolved so fast and became the dominant species in the world while other life forms remain the same?
Recent research has shown that humans have a lower mutation rate than chimpanzees and gorillas, their closest living relatives. Humans and other apes copy and proofread their DNA with basically the same biological machinery as yeast, which is about a billion years old. Yet, humans and apes have only existed for a small fraction of this time, a few million years.
Statistical analysis of the genomes of thousands of people from all over the world did indeed show that the mutation rates of many different three-letter DNA motifs have changed during the past 20,000 years of human evolution. Harris and Pritchard report that when groups of humans left Africa and settled in isolated populations across different continents, each population quickly became better at avoiding mutations in some genomic contexts, but worse in others. This suggests that the risk of passing on harmful mutations to future generations is changing and evolving at an even faster rate than was originally suspected.
The results suggest that every human ethnic group carries specific variants of the genes which ensure that DNA replication and repair are accurate. These differences appear to influence which types of mutations are frequently passed down to future generations. An important next step will be to identify the genetic variants that could be controlling mutational patterns and how they affect human health.
It is possible that humans were in fact being programmed and conditioned at the DNA level to evolve faster perhaps planted on earth by intelligent life forms beyond our universe. If humans were to be evolve by itself from a single cell at the beginning of time on earth, it is unlikely that we will be able to become the dominant species in such a short period of time. considering other much more ancient life forms like a horseshoe crab.
Needless to say, our solar system is surrounded and seems to be protected or shielded by both the kuiper belt and the oort cloud. If we think about it, Earth could be an incubation of humans in this protected bubble from everything that's beyond the universe. The question is could there be other aliens race which may want to conquer other planets and harness its resources? Are we a product of a single alien race experiments or development of the so called superior 3rd class highly evolved humans and what is humans purpose on earth? Was humans given a short life span so that we could get as much as we can out of our life to develop something very critical and importance for this single alien race?
#aliens #ufo #uap
0 Comments