Around 1.7 billion years ago, eukaryotes—the building blocks of complex life—first appeared on Earth, and now scientists have ...

The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the arrival of all complex life on Earth has had an unsolved mystery at its heart. According to the theory, all plants, animals and fungi, known ...

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones.

In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma ...

Researchers investigating the origin of complex life on Earth might have just made a major breakthrough. The origin of humanity and the planet Earth is probably debated more than whether the chicken ...

Ancient microbes tied to our earliest ancestors could use oxygen, reshaping ideas about how complex life began on Earth.

The sun has just set on a quiet mudflat in Australia’s Northern Territory; it’ll set again in another 19 hours. A young moon looms large over the desolate landscape. No animals scurry in the waning ...

Mitochondria arose through a fateful endosymbiosis more than 1.45 billion years ago. Many mitochondria make ATP without the help of oxygen. Aa Aa Aa What variety is there in mitochondria? Mitochondria ...

A team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has produced what may be the strongest evidence yet that the ...

New genomic research shows some Asgard archaea, ancestors of plants, animals, and fungi, tolerated and used oxygen. The finding supports the idea that complex life arose after oxygen levels surged and ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The sun has just set on a quiet mudflat in Australia’s Northern Territory; it’ll set again in another 19 hours. A young moon looms large over the desolate landscape. No ...