> prokaryotes have been around a lot longer, so they’ve had a lot more evolutionary time to find perfect proteins for their perfect little uses.
I'm not sure that adds up: It's not that much longer - 500 million years out of ~3.5 billion?
And the evidence shows that Eukaryotes have evolved much faster and further - just look at the Eukaryota domain. And IIRC part of the reason is advantages such as 'sexual' [0] reproduction - rather than just splitting and (cloning?) DNA, combining chromosomes from two parents.
A billion to a billion and a half, maybe two billion if it turns out prokaryotes first appeared as far back as 4 billion years ago (jury is out on this too).
But the first complex multicellular life only appears about 1.6 BYA, and sexual reproduction and cell differentiation only about 1.2 BYA.
And no, I wouldn’t say eukaryotes have evolved faster or further, just differently. It’s questionable they’d be able to do any of this without the mitochondrial and chloroplast endosymbiotic events, and microbiomes have existed since the beginning as well. Framing it as a contest misses the point, in the end.
I'm not sure that adds up: It's not that much longer - 500 million years out of ~3.5 billion?
And the evidence shows that Eukaryotes have evolved much faster and further - just look at the Eukaryota domain. And IIRC part of the reason is advantages such as 'sexual' [0] reproduction - rather than just splitting and (cloning?) DNA, combining chromosomes from two parents.
[0] If that's the correct term.