The paper shows how Earth's earliest life forms—microbes such as O 2-producing bacteria and methane-producing archaea—shaped, and were shaped by, changes in the oceans, continents, and atmosphere.

The origins of life on Earth have long fascinated scientists, particularly the nature of the last universal common ancestor ...

A new study suggests that the explosive deaths of the universe's earliest stars created surprising quantities of water that ...

In a new peer reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The ...

Roughly 201 million years ago, drastic changes extinguished many forms of life and led to conditions that allowed the ...

Few questions in the history of science eclipse the all-important investigation into how life first formed on Earth. Although there are many theories, one leading idea is that the hydrothermal vents ...

Subsequent studies continue to debate the belt's exact age. Some researchers have also suggested the belt contains evidence of Earth's earliest life — traces of bacteria dating to between 4.3 billion ...

Water is the essence of life. Every living thing on Earth contains water within it. The Earth is rich with life because it is ...

In the orange layers, the rock dried out too quickly for the microscopic algae — also known as cyanobacteria, the earliest known form of life on Earth — to grow, according to the DBCA.

As life evolved on Earth, it used and created minerals for exoskeletons and habitats. The hundred minerals present when life first formed have grown to about 5,000 today. For example, zircons are ...

Why it's incredible: The rock formations contain traces of the earliest life-forms on Earth. The Bungle Bungles are a collection of sandstone towers with distinctive orange and dark-gray stripes ...