[jfarlow]

Search space for the first billion or so years was likely around atoms/chemistry. Search space for the next billion or so years was likely around mutations in well-defined genetic space (4 nucleic acids as building blocks, 20 amino acids as building blocks). Search space for the past 700M years has included 'recombination' (copy/swap/paste) of larger chunks of (existing) genetic code (in addition to the prior two mechanics). There are probably many such abstraction layers, including like you mention, copying/pasting of entire organisms, environments, biospheres...