I forget exactly what Dawkins wrote, and I don't have the book here to check, but he didn't discuss the matter in any detail at all. He basically just wrote that eukaryotes were formed by bacteria living together in colonies. I think my ire was raised a bit just by the way he'd declared as brute fact what I understood to still be controversial and debated.
quote:
Bacteria of several different kinds got together, more than a thousand million years ago, to form the 'eucaryotic cell'. This is our kind of cell, with a nucleus and other complicated internal parts, many of them put together from intricately folded internal membranes, like the mitochondria...The euaryotic cell is now seen as derived from a colony of bacteria. Eucaryotic cells later got together into colonies. Volvox are modern creatures...But it is possible that they represent the kind of thing that went on more than a thousand million years ago
I'm assuming this is the passage in question? Hope it helps.
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