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. The ...

If all the world's a stage and all the species merely players, then their exits and entrances can be found in the rock record. Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction ...

A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ancient ...

Bacteria are the most diverse organisms on Earth, with a number of species that's difficult to quantify. They're also incredibly old Bacteria consist of a single cell. They do not have bones and are ...

Ancient animal history is extremely difficult to reconstruct, for a number of reasons. Some of the earliest creatures in existence were soft-bodied and microscopic, leaving behind very little evidence ...

There are roughly a trillion species of microorganisms on Earth—the vast majority of which are bacteria. Bacteria consist of a single cell. They do not have bones and are not like big animals that ...

The emergence of the first biopolymers and their building blocks on the early Earth is considered a key moment in the origin of life (OoL), but how life began on the prebiotic Earth from a pile of ...