SELEX for functional nucleic acids is another (one my favorite). First wave of synthetic ribozymes, deoxyribozymes, and aptamers out from Gold, Joyce, Szostak labs around similar time.
Many big scientific discoveries are races.
Consider splicing - co-discovered by Sharp & Roberts, with many others close behind. Erase one and the discovery still happens within months.
What breaks this pattern? “If not for X, it would have been decades before Y was discovered.”