Some 550 million years ago, Earth looked very different than it does today. The Southern Hemisphere was dominated by an ...

A 324-million-year-old fossil suggests early insects lived between water and land as their bodies gradually changed over time ...

Hydrothermal vent field. (Schmidt Ocean Institute) If you ask a scientist how life appeared on Earth, they will usually begin ...

An astronomer at Columbia University is suggesting that because life emerged so soon on Earth after its formation, it may emerge rapidly on Earth-like planets after the right conditions arise in ...

A new study reveals the ‘faecal revolution’ that kicked off the existence of most major animal groups.

How did life go from tiny organisms to large, complex creatures? Scientists see clues in fossils from as far back as 570 ...

One debate about the origin of life on Earth concerns whether it formed around deep-sea hydrothermal vents or in scars left behind by an asteroid impact. A new review article analyzes recent research ...

Some scientists suspect that microorganisms can hop between planets by jumping aboard debris kicked up by asteroid strikes. NASA / JPL-Caltech For decades, some of Earth’s brightest scientists have ...