Also known as MRCA, LCA, last common ancestor, concestor
most recent individual from which all organisms in a group are directly descended
A most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as a last common ancestor (LCA) or concestor (a term coined by Nicky Warren), is the most recent individual from which all organisms of a set are inferred to have descended. The most recent common ancestor of a higher taxon is generally assumed to have been a species. The term is also used in reference to the ancestry of groups of genes (haplotypes) rather than organisms.
The ancestry of a set of individuals can sometimes be determined by referring to an established pedigree, although this may refer only to patrilineal or matrilineal lines for sexually-reproducing organisms with two parents, four grandparents, etc. However, in general, it is impossible to identify the exact MRCA of a large set of individuals, but an estimate of the time at which the MRCA lived can often be given. Such time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) estimates can be given based on DNA test results and established mutation rates as practiced in genetic genealogy, or by reference to a non-genetic, mathematical model or computer simulation.
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Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).