THE study of form has revealed the importance of convergence in the evolution of plants and animals, as well as the inevitable influence of laws of growth which apply to creatures whatsoever their ...

A research team led by UC Berkeley scientists has defined a new branch on the tree of life after sequencing about 800 largely unknown bacteria genomes. The researchers classified these very small ...

This article was originally featured on Undark. For centuries, taxonomists have cataloged every living thing they could find. Expeditions have traveled the globe, searching for unknown species; ...

Humans make stuff up—including the names and classifications of living things. But those categories are still useful. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how taxonomy and systematics ...

Fish, flies and bears, oh my! A new research breakthrough gives genetic proof of how differences in (very different) animals develop. An international team of biologists has identified the molecular ...

A new evolutionary definition of cell types is presented. Cell types are evolutionary units defined by common descent rather than phenotypic similarity, and characterized by their ability to evolve ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional ...

The history of life stretches back untold eons. Today, there is a staggering array of organisms on Earth, with more species being discovered every year. The complexity of life, from the smallest ...

Children are taught that all living organisms -- from animals, plants, and fungi to bacteria and single-celled organisms -- belong to specifically different categories of organic life. A new discovery ...

What would you call an alien if you encountered it on the street tomorrow? What if that alien didn’t come from another world but rather was created in a laboratory right here on Earth and functioned ...

Using genetic discoveries based on modern bioluminescent organisms, scientists have estimated coral bioluminescence to have originated in the Cambrian period, about 540 million years ago. This finding ...