For anyone else trying to follow this research, the article is describing the paper by Moody et al. from a year and a half ago.
Is the article missing words?
While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation.
530 million years ago? 530 million years after the earth formed?
4 billion years ago?
You know what? I’m happy. It means the article was not written by AI, because AI would not have made such a stupid mistake.
until the ai carches on and starts intentionally making mistakes to pass our new turing test better than we can
Since the 4 billion years is contrasted with 600 million years after rhe planet formed, I assume they meant “years ago”. Very unclear though.
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…scientists still don’t understand how life evolved from its very origins to the early communities of which LUCA is a part.
Failure of alien biocontainment systems. Or maybe deliberate life seeding. Or hitchhiking enclosed ecosystem, like a biosphere, on a meteorite.