> multicellular life only appeared once

Simple Multicellularity is estimated to have evolved at least 20 and probably more than 50 times for independent events of simple multicellularity.

Complex multicellurarity at least six times (animals, plants, fungi, brown and red algae).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism

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mattmaroon 4 days ago | parent [-]

One has to imagine that there were a substantial number of misfires along the way too. Multi-cellular organisms that popped up and died for one reason or another before they had a chance to reach escape velocity. Like an amoeba that eats a bacteria and incorporates it but the mud puddle they are in dried up.

Wouldn’t surprise if for us to know about 50 at this point there were orders of magnitude more that we’ll never know of.

	▲	goku12 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> One has to imagine that there were a substantial number of misfires along the way too. > Wouldn’t surprise if for us to know about 50 at this point there were orders of magnitude more that we’ll never know of. Indeed! The Wikipedia article mentions it. To be honest, it's a surprise that we know about 50 cases, given the fact that almost none of them had any hard tissue or structures (like bones or shells) that can survive as fossils. Given those odds, we are likely underestimating the cases by several orders of magnitude.