The code that is DNA

[Peebothuhlu]

I agree. Although I don't know if I agree with the first come first serve narrative. We, as living beings, are still stumbling across entire species we hadn't discovered yet, billions of years after the fact; we're even finding new isolated tribes of our own kind. Earth is big enough that entire populations can thrive under our noses without being devoured.

If life emerged multiples times, there's enough distance in the world for multiple lineages to have emerged. Even puddles a few inches (centimeters) apart, are a solar system away at the microscopic level. By devouring do you mean in the competition sense, indirectly by devouring each others resources? Or do you mean actually devouring, in the carnivore prey/predator sense?

Uhm... the 'Sense of scale' in your comment is just a tad 'Off'.

Everything we're finding/discovering is still all within the same biology.

Also the planet itself has 'Re-mapped' its surface a number of times since life started multiplying. Not counting the events which nearly cleaned life OFF this rock.

So there's almost been a couple of 'Resets' in the millions of years since our oblate sphereoid coalesced, but I digress.

So, speaking as a complete lay-man, once a certain DNA (Three base pairs. Right handed chyralty etc) type became 'The majority'? Then, yes, pretty much everything else became 'Food' for it and was (For want of a better term) eaten to extinction.

Actually... 'If' the "RNA world" hypothesis is correct then, litterally, the DNA world of today made the previous biology 'extinct'.

I remember hearing/reading some where that life derived organic molecules are so ubiquitous/abundant on Earth that major efforts are neded to completely 'Sterilize' basic water etc so as to remove all traces/taints of such things so as to not comtaminate further/new experiments.

One of the reasons for going out and exploring places like Io etc is to see if there might be a biome that's completely alien compared to that of Earth.

Cheers.

Not at work.