The Gospel of LUCA: In Search of the Animal Kingdom's Ancestry

The author tells about the animal world and the human line. Only LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) is not an apostle—it’s our common ancestor, and to figure out what kind of creature it was, you, together with biologist Maksym Vynarsky, will travel through a span of more than 4 billion years. You’ll learn about the origins and evolution of multicellular animals. It will explain that we, humans, are merely one of many branches of the great Tree of Life, and that the species Homo sapiens emerged according to laws shared by the evolution of all living things. It will also show how biologists identify relationships among animals and reconstruct the paths of their evolution. You’ll hear about the life and scientific discoveries of scholars—those who came up with the idea of evolutionary kinship among all organisms on Earth and guessed how this kinship can be determined.