New form of life discovered
"The tree of life just got another major branch. Researchers recently
found a certain rare and mysterious microbe called a hemimastigote in a
clump of Nova Scotian soil. Their subsequent analysis
of its DNA revealed that it was neither animal, plant, fungus nor any
recognized type of protozoan — that it in fact fell far outside any of
the known large categories for classifying complex forms of life
(eukaryotes). Instead, this flagella-waving oddball stands as the first
member of its own “supra-kingdom” group, which probably peeled away from
the other big branches of life at least a billion years ago."
More at
Quanta magazine.
Whoa. I was going to make the "Oh fuck, not another phylum" reference, but as it turns out, "kingdom" is even higher up the taxonomic hierarchy of life. That's quite something.
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