Explore the history of life on Earth, from 3.5-billion-year-old fossils to the vast diversity of species on our planet today.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Single-celled microbes are believed to be Earth’s earliest life forms, but their soft bodies left almost no fossil evidence behind. Recent research ...

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don't yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology, or when the first primitive life forms appeared. But what ...

Four billion years ago, Earth was violent, hot, and unstable. Yet new research suggests that by then, life had already reached a surprising level of complexity. At that time lived the last universal ...

Scientists have pushed back LUCA’s origin by hundreds of millions of years.

David Attenborough's acclaimed nature series Life on Earth began production 50 years ago. Now, a PBS documentary captures the ...

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Without the right oxygen balance, phosphorus and nitrogen vanish — and life can't take hold. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Life ...