DNA from Icelandic lava flows reveals how microbes move into a brand-new habitat, offering insights into early life on Earth ...

All life on Earth comes from one single ancestor. And it's so much older than we thought. All life on Earth can be traced ...

The tiny pantheon known as the Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how plants, animals and fungi emerged on Earth.

Surface-bound gels may have offered the structure and chemistry needed for life to take hold on Earth—and possibly elsewhere. How did life first take shape? A group of scientists from Japan, Malaysia, ...

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 ...

Discover a vast, previously unknown world of microbial life that survives—and even thrives—for hundreds of millions of years in some of the planet's harshest environments. After a grueling descent ...

The nitrogen in the gum was found to be in nitrogen heterocycles, which are the building blocks of nucleobases in DNA and RNA ...