Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. A study suggests that this organism likely ...

"This is the story of Earth like you’ve never seen it before—from the first spark of life to prehistoric monsters to the rise of humans… and all the weird stuff in between." We live on a magnificently ...

For decades, scientists believed that life on Earth took at least a billion years to get started. The prevailing idea was that the planet’s violent early history—especially a period of intense ...

The last common ancestor of all living things did not just suddenly appear on Earth roughly 4.2 billion years ago. Some of ...

Scientists believe they’ve found evidence that life on Earth is over a billion years older than anyone believed was realistic. New research used machine learning to scan ancient meteorites and fossils ...

They’re the building rocks of life. Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar system, ...

Compared to previous theories, the current research emphasizes the complexity of the biological and chemical processes that brought about life.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. We’ve pieced together a remarkably detailed timeline of ...

Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key ...