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The Eukaryote. Living things with cells that have a nucleus are eukaryotes. Pretty much everything alive that isn't a bacteria or an archaea is a eukaryote. This includes all the plants, animals, slime molds, protists, and the fungi (the verdict is still out on whether viruses arose from the same primordial soup as prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells or whether viruses are simplified descendants of cells that lost their cell-nature and stripped down to the basics.) At any rate, Eukaryotic life may have evolved from symbiotic colonies of prokaryotic life. This now seems likely. So, prokaryotic cells came first (they are simpler and more primitive), but from the geological record it seems that Eukaryotic cells are almost as ancient as the prokaryotic, emerging over 2.2 billion years ago.
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