In a remote desert, scientists have discovered one of Earth’s oldest asteroid impacts. It dates to well over a billion years ago, to a time when our planet was inhabited solely by single-celled life.

Current conditions in Japanese hot springs give clues as to how some of these ancient microorganisms survived and adapted.

Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place ...

Earth’s familiar green landscape might not have always been so. According to new scientific research published in the ...

Seismic imaging has exposed two massive zones hidden deep in Earth’s mantle. These giant blobs, known as large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs, stretch beneath Africa and the Pacific. They are so ...

Some 2.3 billion years ago, the Earth would have been unrecognizable to us. At that time, ancient microorganisms were the dominant life form; there were no animals, no plant life, and certainly no ...

"Are we alone?" This ancient question has occupied humanity's mind for a long time. In 1995, the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star opened the door to exploring this profound ...

How did ancient extinction events contribute to global climate change? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated a connection ...

What can fossil records teach scientists about ancient ecosystems and marine environments? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address ...

The Great Oxygenation Event marked a massive transition in life on Earth, when oxygen became plentiful and organisms suddenly had to adapt. Current conditions in Japanese hot springs give clues as to ...

New research from Japan's iron-rich hot springs shows how early microbes may have harnessed iron and oxygen during the Great Oxygenation Event. Some 2.3 billion years ago, the Earth would have been ...