An international collaboration has published groundbreaking research, shedding light on the most significant increase in complexity in the history of life's evolution on Earth: the origin of the eukaryotic cell.
The fact that this bacteria so closely resembles that transition point, from two single cells with different genetics to one inseparable cluster, is fascinating: embryo comparisons have provided many clues about our evolutionary history.
Scientists have uncovered a surprising role for calcium in shaping the building blocks of life.
New research out of Stanford University adds a “striking” new twist to an existing theory about how life may have began on our planet, involving the occurrence of microlightning in tiny water droplets.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, rocks crushed under kilometres of ice injected vital nutrients into Earth's oceans.
In 1983, the theoretical physicist Brandon Carter concluded that the time it took for humans to evolve on Earth -- relative to the total lifespan of the Sun - suggests that our evolutionary origin was intrinsically unlikely.
Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago.
One of the biggest scientific mysteries is where life on Earth started.
There is a radical idea that Earth was seeded not just with the building blocks of life but life itself.
Life on Earth may have developed the ability to form embryos even before it grew the very first animals.
Some 3.26 billion years ago a giant rock between 50 and 200 times the size of the Chicxulub dino-killer smacked into our planet. The result of this impact may have churned up nutrients that gave a select few early microbes a boost.
The earliest cells likely didn't have membranes to separate and protect their components and chemistry away from a harsh surrounding environment. But they may have made do with rain.
Highly reactive complex molecules finding some sort of stability was a necessary step towards life getting started on Earth.
A new study has found that life on Earth emerged surprisingly early. Scientists have determined that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the first organism that spawned all the life that exists today on Earth, emerged as early as 4.2 billion years ago.
New research provides the clearest evidence yet that the Cambrian explosion - a rapid burst of evolution 540 million years ago, could have been triggered by only a small increase in oxygen levels in Earth's atmosphere and shallow ocean waters.
