About 4 billion years ago, Earth began to show signs of the conditions that allowed the first cells to take hold and populate ...

Scientists have debated where Prototaxites belong in the tree of life for over a century, but now a new study suggests it ...

To find out if we are alone in the galaxy, we will need to better understand what geochemical conditions nurtured the first life forms. What water, chemistry and temperature cycles fostered the ...

The paper shows how Earth's earliest life forms—microbes such as O 2-producing bacteria and methane-producing archaea—shaped, ...

The first multicelled animals appeared in the fossil record almost 600 million years ago. Known as the Ediacarans, these bizarre creatures bore little resemblance to modern life-forms. They grew ...

The team from Syracuse University, Oxford University and Stanford University explored the intricate feedbacks among ancient life forms ... notes Lu. "The first part of the history of the ...

An international team of researchers has reconstructed the evolutionary tree of one of Earth’s earliest life forms, revealing that bacteria may have adapted to the presence of oxygen long before ...

New research suggests “microlightning” exchanges among water droplets in Earth’s early atmosphere may have sparked the ...

Imagine if the genetic deck had been shuffled slightly differently as some of the earliest life forms began their evolutionary paths. Might a creature just as smart as us -- or even smarter ...

Single-celled organisms that group together can generate stronger water currents to pull in food, a benefit that may have ...