Sripada Richard Dawkins speaks about the Prajapati

The Hindu Deity Prajapati, the progenitor of all living beings

We can be very sure there really is a single concestor of all surviving life forms on this planet. The evidence is that all that have ever been examined (exactly in most cases, almost exactly in the rest) the same genetic code; and the genetic code is too detailed, in arbitrary aspects of its complexity, to have been invented twice. Although not every species has been examined, we already have enough coverage to be pretty certain that no surprises - alas - await us… As things stand, it appears that all known life forms can be traced to a single ancestor which lived more than 3 billion years ago.

- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale, p 7

It is a remarkable fact that there must be a moment in history when there were two animals in the same species, one of whom became the ancestor of all humans and no aardvarks, while the other became the ancestor of all aardvarks and no humans. They may well have met, and may even have been brothers. You can cross out aardvark and substitute any modern species you like, and the statement must still be true. Think it through, and you will find that it follows from the fact that all species are cousins of one another. Bear in mind when you do so that the 'ancestor of all aardvarks' will also be the ancestor of lots of very different things besides aardvarks.

- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale, p 40

In the Srimad Bhagavatam the ultimate ancestry of living beings is variously ascribed to Brahma (SB 4.24.42), to Vishnu (SB. 10.40.13), and to Shiva (SB. 5.24.17).

The Vedic idea is that there is a limited set of common ancestors of all living beings, descended from the single common ancestor and called the prajapatis. The way the story is commonly recounted, the prajapatis are born of the original common ancestor, the prajapati-pati, and their wives give birth to all the various living species. The exact details of how they do this are not given, and trying to imagine how one lady gives birth to millions of different species can sometimes be a factor in someone going: "This is too fanatastic, I'm giving up this Vedic narrative for some rational science."

However, if you actually follow through on inquiry in the rational scientific school, and sit at the feet of the master of rational science, His Eminence Professor Richard Dawkins, studying his works such as River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, and The Ancestor's Tale, you will gain a scientific understanding of exactly how this is so. The Vedic literature compresses geological ages into sutras, and presents the conclusion in a way that can be comprehended by pre-scientific people.

All living beings of the various species that we see today have a limited set of common ancestors, and ultimately a single common ancestor.

The background stories in the Srimad Bhagavatam, about creation and the structure of the universe, are the same as the background stories in all the Puranas. They represent the cultural context of the civilisation that produced the Puranas. Their scientific understanding of the material world is presented in the poetic and metaphorical language that they used and understood. However, each of the Puranas differs in the metaphysical message that accompanies this cultural context. The message of the Bhagavatam is not about the prajapatis, and the prajapatis and the prajapatih-pati appear as background for specific stories, such as the Marriage of Kardama Muni and Devahuti (as SB 3.20), which carry the real import of the work.