Humanity may not be extraordinary but rather the natural evolutionary outcome for our planet and likely others, according to a new model for how intelligent life developed on Earth. The model, which ...

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

We have only one example of biology forming in the universe – life on Earth. But what if life can form in other ways? How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like ...

We know that Darwinian evolution acts on all forms of life, but does evolution act on non-living materials as well? Otto and his team used a system of three different self-replicating molecules, that, ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

Evolution is perhaps the most extraordinary story ever told—a tale spanning billions of years that connects every living thing on Earth through an intricate web of shared ancestry. From the tiniest ...

Has the answer to life’s origins been hiding in our cells all along? The surprising discovery of mysterious blobs inside our ...

The goal of understanding how inert molecules gave rise to life is one step closer, according to researchers who have created a system of RNA molecules that can partly replicate itself. They say it ...

Researchers have identified microstructures in fossil cells that are 1.75 billion years old. These structures, called thylakoid membranes, are the oldest ever discovered. They push back the fossil ...

When we look at the world around us, we see a wonderous variety of living things—with fins, fronds or feet, living in the deepest ocean or the driest deserts, eating seeds or salmon or sunlight. The ...