Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

New research from ETH Zurich reveals that beyond water and oxygen, phosphorus and nitrogen are critical for life's existence ...

Ancient enzymes show life’s nitrogen signal stayed unchanged for billions of years, helping scientists read early Earth.

Ancient evidence suggests a new twist in how we all got here.

Scientists have finally discovered how amino acids essential for life formed on the 4.6-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu.

The discovery of catalytic RNA transformed our understanding of life's beginnings. Clare Sansom explores how the RNA world ...

New method reveals chemical signs of early microbial life in ancient Earth rocks, showing photosynthesis evolved much earlier than believed.

Hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs, the tallest things on land were not trees or animals but towering, trunk-like ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Cyanide has a very deadly reputation, but the chemical compound hydrogen cyanide (one of many possible cyanide compounds) may also be the reason why ...

Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this ...

A bizarre fossil called Prototaxites, which was the largest life-form on land 400 million years ago, may have been a completely unknown form of multicellular life, according to a new study.

NASA's Perseverance rover discovered rocks on Mars, providing new evidence the red planet was once a wet, habitable world that could support life.