Life on Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor.

Early Earth lacked life’s essentials until a collision with Theia added them. This chance event made life possible. After the Solar System formed, it took no more than three million years for the ...

Introduction : The coherence of history / Stephen Jay Gould -- The planetary setting of prebiotic evolution / Sherwood Chang -- Early environments : constraints and opportunities for early evolution / ...

(THE CONVERSATION) People have long wondered what life was first like on Earth, and if there is life in our solar system beyond our planet. Scientists have reason to believe that some of the moons in ...

Moving ice on early Earth exposed deep rocks, freed key elements, and nudged our planet toward conditions where complex life ...

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, possesses a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere that bears striking similarities to that of early Earth. Scientists are fascinated by Titan’s atmospheric composition and its ...

All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. A study suggests that this organism likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after its formation. Further ...