All language subtitles for BBC.Evolution.1of5.The.Elephant.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org

Across our natural world,

life has taken on countless forms.

Wondrous, strange...

..and endlessly diverse.

It's easy to imagine that all of this
is, like,

somehow preordained...

..that it's been made, a world of
balance and purpose,

but the truth... The truth is much wilder.

This is a world of survivors.

From Earth's earliest moments,

evolution has quietly,

relentlessly,

shaped the story of life.

I can hear it...

And in this series...

It's quite emotional, if I'm honest
with you!

...we'll trace the astonishing
evolutionary journeys of five

iconic modern animals.

Look at this!

Truly spectacular!

We'll meet their oddball ancestors
from the distant past

and discover how generation, by
generation...

Absolutely amazing!

..they changed, to become the
creatures we know today.

From the smallest beginnings come the
most extraordinary stories,

stories of survival, of bizarre
transformations,

shaping life in the strangest of ways

and, behind it all, the unstoppable
force of evolution.

Look at that! They used to say that
animals couldn't experience joy.

Come on! That looks like muddy, wet
joy to me!

CHRIS LAUGHS

The African savannah elephant has to
be one of evolution's most

enchantingly strange creatures.

I mean, look at the trunk.

When they're adult, that measures
nearly two metres in length,

and it contains perhaps 90,000
miniature muscles.

And then the tusks.

Those are teeth that never stop
growing.

The ears! Look at the ears on this
one,

the size of a table cloth,

flapping away.

But their one most obvious defining
feature, of course, is their size.

Look at that!

They can regularly reach five, six,
seven tonnes.

The very biggest, ten tonnes.

They are colossal.

So, here's a question for you.

How did evolution come up with
something as complex,

as beautiful and as enormous as this?

How did the elephant come to be?

Well, to understand the elephant,

the largest land animal alive today...

..you have to understand evolution
itself.

There was no blueprint, no grand
design.

Evolution is a process, shaped by
powerful, invisible drivers.

Like hunger...

..conflict...

..and even...

..catastrophe.

So where does our story begin?

The answer lies in what these giants
are made of.

They may be the world's largest land
mammals, they may be beautiful,

but brutally biologically speaking,
this is just a giant mass of cells.

Now, in case of the elephant, that's a
lot of cells.

It's a quadrillion.

That's a one with 15 zeros after it.

Cells are the fundamental building
blocks, not just of elephants,

but of all life today, be it animal...

..plant,

fungi...

..or bacteria.

So, where did those cells come from?

Well, each one of this animal's cells
has come from other

cells, which have either divided or
reproduced.

OK, where did those cells come from?

Well, they come from other cells that
divided and reproduced.

In fact, we can trace this chain back
over unimaginable

periods of time, through many
long-lost extinct species,

until remarkably it converges at a
single point,

a single-celled organism that's
connected to every living thing,

every branch on the tree of life,

a common ancestor that lived billions
of years ago,

the cell that started everything.

Now, when it comes to evolution, you
need to take the long view.

I mean the really long view.

The elephant's improbable journey
begins before mammals, before

dinosaurs stomped about, before
anything even had legs to stomp.

It's a story that starts with a simple
truth.

If you want to evolve, you have to
survive first.

Violent,

loud...

Frankly, overdramatic.

The young Earth is no paradise...

..but beneath the waves, life has
already taken hold.

Trillions of tiny, primitive cells
battle the elements.

Almost all will perish.

But one cell is different.

Within this tiny speck lies the future
of all living things.

It's a speck with a name.

Meet LUCA, the ultimate survivor.

The great-great-great times a billion
grandparent of you,

the elephant, and every other living
thing on Earth.

LUCA stands for Last Universal Common
Ancestor.

So, let's just think about this for a
moment, because it was this

single-celled organism, floating
around in a world entirely

alien to our own, which gave rise to
every living thing on our planet.

That's me, that's you, that's all the
animals, all the plants,

all the fungi, all the bacteria,
everything!

So, LUCA isn't just a clever acronym,

something out of a biology class.

LUCA defines the point where the story
of life as we know it

truly began.

There are no fossils of LUCA...

..but because all living things have
DNA

and use the same genetic code, we know
there must be a shared origin.

Look at that.

But why did LUCA and its descendants
survive...

Ooh! ..when trillions of others
vanished?

That's actually starting to burn my
hand.

Clues can be found in the Earth's most
extreme places.

I want to take my hand out of there.
That's how hot it is.

With alkaline water up to 86 degrees
Centigrade...

..these are the sort of hostile
conditions LUCA may have endured.

But nevertheless, look.

Life is tolerating it all round here.

I know what you're thinking, this
doesn't look like much,

and certainly compared to us, this is
pretty simple stuff.

But I've got to tell you, it's not.

The cells in here are amongst the most
complex

things in the known universe.

Each one of these cells is generating
energy,

distributing that energy, dealing with
waste.

It's sensitive to its environment,
it's reproducing.

Every one of these cells is more
complex than any machine

ever made by any human.

Just like these cells, LUCA was
complex, robust, resilient...

..which may have helped it cling on
against the odds.

Now, we know that Luca wasn't the
first cell and that it lived amongst

other cells, but what made it special
is that it didn't just live,

it thrived, it survived.

That little bubble of chemicals,

formed in chaos billions of years ago.

LUCA was the little cell that could.

Plucky? Yes.

Lucky? Almost certainly...

..but it also has life's greatest
survival trick.

LUCA can copy itself.

Well enough to keep its genetic line
going...

..but not so perfectly that every copy
is identical.

With every new generation, tiny
errors, mutations,

creep into its DNA.

And yet these so-called mistakes fuel
evolution.

The story of our modern, living world
has begun.

Now it's time to hit fast forward.

I mean, you can't cover four billion
years of evolution without

skipping some chapters.

Generation after generation,

little mistakes lead to entirely new
life forms.

Some cells begin to capture the
sunlight - the ancestors of plants.

Others would adapt to feed on decay -
fungi.

Many stay small and simple - the
hidden world of microbes.

But the cells that would give rise to
the elephant

take a very different path...

..three and a half billion years after
LUCA...

..when the Earth is in a deep freeze.

This is a period of intense global
cooling.

Ice grips the planet, and food webs
are collapsing.

But somewhere in the cold and dark,

one hungry cell is about to change
everything.

The need to feed is one of the great
driving forces of evolution.

Any creature that can find its food
more efficiently is more

likely to survive and pass its genes
into the next generation,

as was the case over 600 million years
ago

when a single cell was on the verge of
a breakthrough,

a breakthrough that would lead to the
incredible

diversity of almost all animal life to
come.

Meet the ancient ancestor of the
elephant...

..indeed of all animal kind.

Urchoanozoan now has mitochondria for
energy...

..a nucleus for control...

..and a tail-like flagellum to move.

But one thing hasn't changed...

..this cell is still tiny...

..just 100th of a millimetre across.

It's a small cell with a big problem.

Food is brutally scarce.

And that cell's ancient hunger may
have set life on a new course.

And you can see how, thanks to a
remarkable creature alive today.

You might be wondering, what have

a mass of insects like this got

to do with an ancient single-celled
organism?

Well, the twist is that in the quest
for food,

they both came up with a similar
solution...

..and it's down to numbers.

You see, single ants are not very good

when it comes to overwhelming prey.

They're simply too small, they don't
have the strength.

So, what they've done is turn into a
mass killing machine.

Each one of the individuals has become
a cog in that machine,

and this means that they're far more
efficient

when it comes to handling whatever
they're going to eat.

Ow! It's all right.

These ants act as one giant
organism...

..overwhelming their meals with sheer
force of numbers...

..and when they swarm, almost anything
is on the menu.

Crickets, caterpillars, or, if they're
wounded,

even chickens, goats and pigs and, by
the feel of it, even a Packham!

And there's the parallel with those
ancient single-celled organisms,

because they were about to adopt a
similar technique which would

change the world...

..forever.

Oh, my goodness!

My world's been changed forever, I
think, to be quite honest with you.

There are some of them in places that
you won't be filming them.

Get off!

Over 600 million years ago,

Urchoanozoan is about to do something
revolutionary.

Its surface is coated with sticky
molecules...

..and when the time comes to divide...

..instead of floating off to live
independent lives...

..the two remain stuck together.

They continue to divide.

More and more cells stick together...

...until...

..a vast alliance forms.

Dubbed the Death Star...

..it's 100 larger than a single
cell...

..and it has something of the dark
side to it.

When the all the flagella wiggle,

they create stronger water currents...

..drawing in bacteria so the Death
Star can feed.

From cells sticking together came a
new way of living.

A multicellular organism is formed.

Over the next 100 million years,

the Death Star's descendants continue
to grow...

..not just in size,

but in complexity...

..as individual cells begin to
specialise...

..until something truly revolutionary
emerges...

..the first bodies on Earth.

The oceans have now warmed and they're
full of life forms.

And lurking among them is the ancestor
of the elephant.

No trunk, no tusks...

..just a worm, three millimetres long,

dragging itself across the seafloor.

Evolution gave it a body,

but one so small and simple you'd
barely notice it.

Building something bigger

and more complex would require one
vital ingredient...

..oxygen.

Inside every cell in our body a slow,
controlled burn is happening.

Not with flames, of course, that would
be concerning.

But just like this fire, we need
oxygen to release energy.

Without it, we would simply sputter
out and die.

But for ancient animals, oxygen was
largely out of reach.

I've got some earthworms here,
charming creatures,

creatures of childhood, but not
terribly sophisticated,

particularly when it comes to
breathing.

You see, just like those early
animals,

they breathe through their skin.

It's permeable, and as long as it's
moist,

they can extract oxygen from the air.

But imagine you're living half a
billion years ago.

You're much smaller than this, and
living at the bottom

of an ocean where the oxygen supply is
pitifully low.

Life was small, life was slow,

life was stuck.

But this ancient worm has stumbled
upon a new way to

boost its oxygen supply.

Tiny pores along its body, used to
filter food,

are now quietly adapting to a new
role.

They're able to draw in a fraction
more oxygen...

..the beginning of a transformation
that will allow creatures to

grow bigger and stronger.

And beating the competition is what
it's all about.

Generation by generation, tiny
wrinkles inside the pores deepen,

folding, twisting, meaning more
surface area,

more oxygen...

..until a whole new body part evolves.

In tracing the evolution of the
elephant or, for that matter,

any other large land animal,

the appearance of gills is hardly an
obvious landmark moment.

After all, elephants aren't famed for

their deep-sea diving capabilities.

But the emergence of gills was more
than a minor upgrade.

It was an evolutionary quantum leap.

This is the fossil of Yunnanozoon.

It lived in the Cambrian around 500
million years ago.

What is it? Well, it wasn't a worm,
wasn't yet a fish,

but what makes it interesting is
this...

You can see these feathery structures

running down here in rows.

Some scientists believe that this is
the first evidence

that we've discovered of gills.

Intricate folds like these can
radically increase

the surface area that's in contact
with water...

..giving the animal the potential to
access much more oxygen.

And, of course, more oxygen means more
energy.

That can mean bigger bodies, faster
movement.

This innovation set the stage, not
just for fish,

or for elephants, but also for you and
I.

We tend to think of gills as a fish
thing,

but once they were pretty much
everyone's thing.

Every amphibian...

..reptile, bird,

every mammal alive today descended
from ancestors with gills.

So, if gills were such a good idea,

why did so many of us ditch them?

Well, inside this fish is a clue to
one of evolution's boldest leaps.

Look at this extraordinary animal.

This is protopterus aethiopicus and
it's no ordinary fish.

I mean, superficially it looks like an
eel.

It's got this long dorsal fin running
all the way

back down to this very spatulate tail
here.

Beautiful marbling, but look...

Look at these wiggly limbs that are
emerging.

Two at the front here, and two more at
the back.

Frankly, what a weird-looking animal!

But I'm dodging the big issue.

What makes it special is that it can
live in very stagnant water,

water which is almost devoid of
oxygen,

and it can do that because it's a fish
with a secret.

Now, it is very, very slimy...

If I can try and pick it up...

I've got to watch my fingers, because
it's well-armed

with powerful, crushing teeth.

Whoop! Come on.

What a slippery customer.

I just want you to be able to see its
mouth,

because it's through that mouth that
it's able to draw

in deliberately deep gulps of air,
into a blood vessel lined sac

where the oxygen can diffuse

directly into its circulatory system.

There!

Protopterus aethiopicus, that's its
scientific name,

but that adaptation gives it its
common name.

This is not a fish out of water, so
much as a lungfish on land.

This air-gulping ability first evolved
in fish 400 million

years ago, as a simple backup plan for
low oxygen water.

But lungs would become key to one of
evolution's giant leaps...

..the leap on to land.

We're jumping through time again, a
mere 300 million years.

As animals ventured into new
territories...

..limbs evolved, gills disappeared...

..bodies transformed.

But we're picking up the elephant's
story...

..at an evolutionary crossroads.

In the age of the dinosaurs,

life had gone truly XXL.

The largest animals to ever walk the
Earth.

But the ancestor of the elephant has
stayed stubbornly small.

This tiny fuzzball is an early
Afrotherian.

It's got a long way to go before it
can tower over the Savannah,

but its small size is about to pay
off.

A rather large lump of rock is coming.

Time's up for the giant dinosaurs.

Mass extinction events don't go well
for large animals.

They need too much food when there's
not much about,

they're slow to reproduce,

they simply can't bounce back quick
enough.

In order to survive, you need to be
resourceful, adaptable,

but above everything else, you need to
be small.

A bit like this little chap here.

Where is he? Here he is.

Look at that.

That is a tree hyrax.

It's about four or five months old.

What a little beauty!

This tree hyrax is a hand-reared
orphan,

allowing us to get an insight into
what the elephant might have

looked like before it bulked up...

..because, believe it or not,

the hyrax is one of the elephant's
closest living relatives.

OK, he's coming, albeit slowly. Come
on.

What about that?

I'm tempted to use the "c-word". I
mean, he's undeniably cute.

Look at the size of those eyes.

After the asteroid impact, it would

have been mammals of this size that
were left roaming the Earth.

All of the big species would have been
wiped out completely.

Hey, come on.

Mind your footing.

And you can see that it's retained
some of the characteristics

that helped them survive.

It's nimble, it's cautious,
undeniably,

and it knows how to stay out of
trouble.

But, you know, that extinction event
wasn't all about devastation.

It also offered up a landscape of
opportunity,

a complete continent ripe for
repopulation.

With no giant dinosaurs for
competition...

..Africa was an empty stage for
evolution to run riot.

The plants waste no time bouncing
back.

But the ancestor of the elephant
remains small and furry.

To get big, it needs food and lots of
it.

But the hard part isn't finding
dinner.

It's eating it.

Plants must be easy to eat, right?

After all, they can't run away,

they can't fight back and they are
everywhere.

Well, not exactly, because obviously,

plants don't want to be eaten.

So, whilst they can't fight or claw
their way out of trouble,

they have come up with a formidable
range of defences, which

means that all of this greenery here
is almost impossible to eat.

For the ancestors of elephants, plants
posed a serious challenge,

not just because of thorns or toxins,
but what they're made of.

Even modern mammals struggle to digest
them.

Whose poo?

Well, those of you with horses and
ponies will probably get this.

This is zebra poo.

Look at that.

We don't have too much time to admire
it from the outside,

let's delve in straight away.

If I take this piece here, look at
that!

It looks like grass clippings.

So, this has been nibbled, it's been
munched,

it's gone through the stomach, all the
way through the gut of the

zebra, and yet it's barely digested,
and that's because the bulk

of the material that you can see here
is something called cellulose.

It's the tough stuff that gives plants
their strength and rigidity.

But think about it.

If a contemporary, complex,

specialised herbivore like a zebra
can't properly digest this

stuff, what chance would those early
mammals have?

In truth, we are not certain whether
the ancestors of the elephant

made the leap to plant eating before
or after the extinction event.

The fossil record is patchy...

..but we do know the leap happened

thanks to an unlikely alliance...

Not with the bugs it was hunting.

With something much smaller.

You see, inside the elephant's
ancestor,

an invisible army of single-celled
microbes is assembling.

It's not an invasion,

it's the start of a vital partnership.

My goodness! Who says size is not
important?

This is not a termite mound, it's a
termite monument!

It's got to be five metres tall!

Termites are famous for eating wood
and other plant material,

but in truth, that's not the whole
story.

They do the chewing, it's other
organisms that do the digesting.

Inside termite mounds, we find one of
nature's strangest team-ups.

Now, Chris Packham, a bloke who loves
animals,

why is he smashing up a termite mound?

Well, I've thought long and hard about
this.

Firstly, they're extraordinarily
resilient animals,

they'll rebuild this really quickly.

And the second thing is that every
night, all over here,

animals will be breaking into them.

Just consider me the human aardvark.

Besides, what I'm looking for is just
under the surface.

There are plenty of termites here, but
I'm looking for something else.

Ah!

VOICEOVER: Another life-form lives
here.

I think this is it.

VOICEOVER: Small, silent...

Oh, yes, it is!

..and surprisingly useful.

Look at that!

That is termite fungal comb.

Now, the interesting thing about this
fungus is that you can

only find it in termite mounds,
nowhere else in the world.

You see, the termites sort of farm it.

They go out and they collect all that
dead plant material,

which they can't digest themselves,
and then they come back

and give it to the fungus.

The fungus does digest the cellulose,

and then turn it into substances which
the termites can eat.

What about that?

And, of course, it's not just
termites.

Almost every plant-eater you can name
has outsourced digestion

to microbes.

The only difference...

..most keep their microbial munchers
safely tucked away inside their gut.

Just as our bodies evolved, these
sorts of partnerships evolved.

It's difficult to know when, though,
because we don't have any

fossils of prehistoric animals with
bacteria in their guts.

But one thing we know for sure, and
that is that over millions of years,

many species have become dependent on
these sorts of relationships.

Without them, they would simply die.

Sometimes, evolution's boldest moves
aren't physical adaptations,

they're partnerships.

And now, thanks to its microbiome,

it's a good time to sample the salad
bar.

Generation by generation,

the gut balloons into a fermentation
factory...

..filled with trillions upon trillions

of plant-munching microbes.

Just what you need for a plant-based
diet.

And less than 20 million years
later...

..we get this charming creature, an
early proboscidean...

..now standing at a respectable one
metre tall.

But evolution has hit a problem of its
own making.

This proboscidean has elongated front
teeth.

Great for snagging vegetation...

..but big teeth can have drawbacks.

This is the skull of an adult hyrax.

It's got these massively oversized
incisors there.

What are those teeth for?

Well, for seeing off predators, things
like snakes and eagles,

for displaying to other hyrax, and, if
they cross the line,

for seeing them off too.

But we've got to remember that this is
a herbivorous animal.

How's it going to be nibbling leaves
with these in the way?

Well, it's going to struggle, and I
can demonstrate

that by adapting my own teeth with
some elongated

incisors of my own, and then try and
tuck into a hyrax salad.

Frankly, it's just not working.

So, look, whilst big teeth can be
impressive, and they certainly have

their uses, if you're a herbivore,
they can represent somewhat

of an evolutionary challenge when it
comes to grabbing your grub.

Big front teeth come with trade-offs.

For the hyrax, it means eating food
through the side of the mouth.

But with the proboscideans,

evolution went down a different path.

One individual was born with a
slightly longer nose.

It's the beginning of something
special.

WHISPERS: There they are. There they
are.

To see what a flexible face can be
capable of,

we need a snout specialist.

It's like being a lion, isn't it?
Going out warthog hunting.

Graceful? Not really.

These are animals built for getting
the job done.

Warthogs...

So ugly that they've crossed that line
back into being beautiful.

But we're not here for a beauty
pageant, we're here for biology,

so let's concentrate on their noses, a
remarkable multi-tool.

Warthog noses aren't just for sniffing
snacks.

They're for digging roots, and
manoeuvring food into place.

It's tough, it's not a delicate nose
like ours.

It's really robust.

But even the best nose has its
limits...

..especially when your food is on the
ground, and your face isn't.

The thing is, when you see them
standing up,

they've got quite long legs and short
necks,

so how do you get your nose down
closer to the ground?

Well, you do it like that -

kneeling down.

OK, so technically these are the
creature's wrists,

but either way, it's a brilliant
example of evolution

solving a problem of its own making.

Certainly an effective solution, but
it's not the only way

of meeting that challenge of getting
your nose closer to the ground.

But there was a creature that lived
millions of years ago that

met the challenge in a completely
different way

and came up with something even more
extraordinary.

A tool, if you like, that it could use
for eating, drinking,

smelling and exploring the world.

It would be the final flourish of an
extraordinary evolutionary journey,

a journey that started 4.2 billion
years ago with

a single cell that multiplied...

..and grew in complexity...

..gained a body...

..took a deep breath,

and jumped onto land...

..before teaming up with microbes,
giving it the guts to go vegan.

And now, after countless
generations...

..the nose gets longer...

..stretching down to the ground,
giving better access to food,

so the body continues to grow...

..until we get an animal of
mindboggling complexity

and size that you might just
recognise.

Meet Paleomastodon.

It's got the trunk, it's got the
tusks.

Big ears? Still a work in progress...

..but it's a body shape we might
finally call an elephant.

And evolution didn't stop there.

From creatures with bizarre jaw
extensions...

..others with downward-curving
tusks...

..and, of course, those icons of the
Ice Age, the mammoths.

Giant proboscideans once spanned the
globe.

Africa, Asia, Europe

and South America.

We have evidence of our relationship
with proboscideans

from all over the world, in the form
of these carvings and paintings.

These were not just creatures that
were living in that landscape.

We evolved alongside them.

Our histories are uniquely
intertwined.

Some proboscideans were lost to
natural climate change,

but for others, it was the actions of
our own ancestors.

Today, just three species of
proboscidean remain...

..each emerging within the last 10
million years -

the Asian elephant...

..the African forest elephant...

..and, the biggest of them all,

a grass-eating giant shaped on the
open plains...

..the African savannah elephant.

Remarkable!

Aw, you're wonderful, aren't you?

Let's take one last look at these
incredible creatures.

Made up of a million billion cells,
powered by the largest lungs

of any land animal, and in there, a
gut coiled up, 20 metres long,

packed full of microbes so it can
digest all of this plant material.

And then look at the front here, these
tusks, and between them,

this extraordinary, modified nose, its
trunk,

strong enough to pick up and carry a
human,

delicate enough to pick up a penny.

The evolutionary journey that created
the bizarre

and beautiful elephant is just one
story.

Because, thanks to LUCA, that
single-celled

Last Universal Common Ancestor,

we are all part of an ancient family.

A family that may be bad at keeping in
touch,

and may be a little dysfunctional,

but is always undeniably miraculous.

Look at this!

I'm literally leading a group of
elephants through the forest.

Who would have ever thought it?

Every living thing, everything that's
ever walked,

swum or flown is all connected in that
one tangled story, connected

by that thread that runs through a
four billion year tapestry of life.

Evolution is messy, evolution's
unpredictable and so grand,

we're still really figuring out how it
works, but there is one

thing that we do know, and that is
that given time and the resources,

it comes up with creatures that are as
remarkable as this.

And we should cherish all life on
Earth, not neglect it or

destroy it, because evolution is
wonderful,

life is beautiful.

# You're such a

# Beautiful freak

# I wish there were

# More just like you... #

Next time - how the ostrich got the
biggest egg on the planet...

It's quite emotional, if I'm honest
with you!

..a four billion year love story...

..from the first sex...

..to conquering the land.

An incredible journey of flirting...

..feathers

and fornication...

..giving rise...

Look at this!

..to one of the most extraordinary
birds.

But first,

how do we know that all life on Earth
has a common ancestor?

For centuries, fossils have provided a
window into the past,

helping scientists reconstruct the
tree of life.

- In the past, our understanding for
how a fossil fits in this

larger system of life on Earth was
comparative anatomy,

and it worked for a long time, and it
was a beautiful tool.

- Scientists would look at what
animals or other organisms

had in common, or didn't have in
common,

to try to recreate their evolutionary
relationships.

- I think one thing we have to bear in
mind is

when we look at fossils, we're looking
at just the remains,

what is left behind, and it's not
always complete.

So, it's like trying to reconstruct a
hand from a fingerprint.

- And we made lots of mistakes.
- LAUGHS

But in the middle of the last century,

a discovery changed everything.

- The appearance of DNA really was a
game-changer.

- We couldn't study the tree of life
with just comparative anatomy.

You need DNA.

- We can compare genes to each other,
compare those gene sequences

to each other, look at the letters
that those genes contain,

and use that information to try to
figure out how different

organisms are related to each other.

- By analysing DNA, scientists have
discovered that some

creatures that look very different

are actually closely related,

like the Afrotherian mammals.

And it's also allowed us to trace the
tree of life back further

than ever before, all the way to its
root.

- LAUGHS
ALL:
- LUCA.

- The Last Universal Common Ancestor
to all life on Earth.

- It's the last organism that we can
point back and say, "This is

"a relative of not only us, but
bacteria and elephants and bananas."

- I love thinking of LUCA as being not
just my

great-great-great-great-great-great-
whatever grandparent,

but everybody's
great-great-great-great-great-
whatever grandparent.

- In a landmark study, scientists
analysed

the DNA of 700 different microbial
species, searching

for patterns that would help them
reconstruct LUCA's genetic code.

- Our ability to sequence DNA really
has unlocked our ability to

look deep in time to 4 billion years
ago

and come to a better understanding of
what

our Last Universal Common Ancestor may
have looked like.

- The study revealed that LUCA was
likely to have had

over 2,600 genes, making it
surprisingly complex.

- So, it wasn't necessarily the first
form of life.

It almost certainly wasn't, but it's
the one that got by.

- From that one spark, we see the
origin of all the life that we

see today in its incredible diversity.

- Realising that we all came from
LUCA,

the same seed of the tree of life, is
really humbling to me.

It's a way of thinking about the world

in a much more connected way.

We all came from the same place.

- We've not only expanded our
understanding of the tree life, but

it's changed our understanding of
where we fit into the tree of life.

- Do you want to know how an elephant
is related to a clownfish?

Discover more in a poster from the
Open University on the tree of life.

To get your free copy, scan the QR
code on screen, or ring...

..or visit...