Talk:Timeline of evolution

On the page I said that "later prokaryotes invented glycolysis which employs ATP and is used to this day". I wonder if the earlier chemoautotrophs already used ATP for energy conversion? --AxelBoldt

All living things contain ATP, which is used in RNA production, and I would be very surprised if it has not always been used in energy conversions, as something fundamental to most biological pathways. Of course, some other things could have been more important in the past, like GTP. Out of curiosity, are we saying the earliest prokaryotes had no form of glycolysis? Because they certainly needed to be able to synthesize some sugars, and so break them down, and I've never heard of any other pathway, although it admits some variation. --Josh Grosse

Some notes:

• there is some biochemical evidence that pentose metabolism was earlier than hexose metabolism, so glycolisis probably isn't the earliest form of getting energy
• Why first prokaryotes and the first clad (archaea / bacteria) are listed at the same time 3900 MYA ?
• Mitochondrionless eukaryotes (==cells which have nucleus but no mitochondrion, and not these which lost mitochondrions later) must be listed somewhere
• Getting mitochondrions and chloroplast and mitochondrions should be splitted, the latter occured later.
• Recorded history 4TYA, that is 2000 BCE ? Shouldn't it be earlier ?

--Taw

I'm not familiar with the pentose/hexose question, but I agree with the others. Do you want to make the changes? --AxelBoldt

---

• Table changed to width=72% by Zoe to fix display issue. Wikipedia tables should never be width=100%.

---

Say, can this be right? Well over a billion years for prokaryotes to develop into eukaryotes, but only 100 million years for the first prokaryotes to appear from RNA precursors? I think not. Also, glucose metabolism seems an unlikely early energy currency since glucose probably wasn't being created right and left by photosynthetic organisms. Vent organisms use hydrogen sulfide...

Is there a reference for this article? Or, several even? Graft