Insights into eukaryogenesis from the fossil record

Eukaryogenesis—the process by which the eukaryotic cell emerged—has long puzzled scientists. It has been assumed that the fossil record has little to say about this process, in part because important characters such as the nucleus and mitochondria are rarely preserved, and in part because the prevailing model of early eukaryotes implies that eukaryogenesis occurred before the appearance of the first eukaryotes recognized in the fossil record. Here, I propose a different scenario for early eukaryote evolution than is widely assumed. Rather than crown group eukaryotes originating in the late Paleoproterozoic and remaining ecologically minor components for more than half a billion years in a prokaryote-dominated world, I argue for a late Mesoproterozoic origin of the eukaryotic crown group, implying that eukaryogenesis can be studied using the fossil record. I review the proxy records of four crown group characters: the capacity to form cysts as evidenced by the presence of excystment structures; a complex cytoskeleton as evidenced by spines or pylomes; sterol synthesis as evidenced by steranes; and aerobic respiration—and therefore mitochondria—as evidenced by eukaryotes living in oxic environments, and argue that it might be possible to use these proxy records to infer the order in which these characters evolved. The records indicate that both cyst formation and a complex cytoskeleton appeared by late Paleoproterozoic time, and sterol synthesis appeared in the late Mesoproterozioc or early Neoproterozoic. The origin of aerobic respiration cannot as easily be pinned down, but current evidence permits the possibility that it evolved sometime in the Mesoproterozoic.