Most recent common ancestors

most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth

shared ancestry of organisms from different species

most recent individual from which all organisms in a group are directly descended

species or population that gave birth to panins and hominins

essay by Richard Dawkins

concept in genealogy

thumb|upright=1.35|LUCA and LECA: the origins of the Eukaryote|eukaryotes. The point of fusion (marked "?") below LECA is the FECA, the first eukaryotic common ancestor, some 2.2 billion years ago. Much earlier, some 4 billion years ago, the LUCA gave rise to the two domains of prokaryotes, the [[bacteria and the archaea. After the LECA, some 2 billion years ago, the eukaryotes diversified into a crown group, which gave rise to animals, plants, fungi, and protists.]]

The Urmetazoan is the hypothetical last common ancestor of all animals. The name derives from metazoa, an old biological term for animals. It is universally accepted to have been a multicellular heterotroph — with the novelties of a germline and oogamy, an extracellular matrix (ECM) and basement membrane, cell-cell and cell-ECM adhesions and signaling pathways, collagen IV and fibrillar collagen, different cell types (as well as expanded gene and protein families), spatial regulation and a complex developmental plan, and relegated unicellular stages.

gibbon–human last common ancestor