• Question: Have viruses always been on planet earth?

    Asked by anon-282569 on 24 Feb 2021.
    • Photo: Amal Lavender

      Amal Lavender answered on 24 Feb 2021:

      great question the strong belief is that Viruses are found wherever there is life and have probably existed since living cells first evolved. The origin of viruses is unclear because they do not form fossils, so molecular techniques are used to investigate how they arose

    • Photo: Moya Macdonald

      Moya Macdonald answered on 24 Feb 2021:

      I am not expert in viruses but I think that scientists think they have probably existed since around the same time as life began (which began at least 3.5 billion years ago!! the earliest humans only appeared on earth about 0.007 million years ago) So they’ve been around a real long time!

    • Photo: Isabel Lewis

      Isabel Lewis answered on 25 Feb 2021:

      This is an interesting question, as Amal has said it is unclear about where they originated from. Viruses have been said to go back to the beginning of life on Earth, and before humans as Moya has said.

Comments