When the first spark of life emerged on a young, ocean-covered Earth some four billion years ago, it didn’t happen at once. The process was slow and drawn out over eons, with lifeless chemicals slowly ...

Research is shaking up how we think about evolution, suggesting there's a level of predictability influenced by genes and genetic history.

It is the ultimate mystery of biology: How did life begin? A team of Harvard scientists has brought us closer to an answer by creating artificial cell-like chemical systems that simulate metabolism, ...

Assembly Theory is a way to understand how the complexity of life emerged through a mechanism of “self-assembly.” It could explain how life formed on Earth—or other planets—via the shortest path to ...

Billions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was hostile, with barely any oxygen and toxic conditions for life. Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute studied Japan’s iron-rich hot springs, ...

Imagine a photograph of your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents side by side. You’d see a resemblance, but each generation would look distinct from its predecessors. This is the process of ...

More than half a billion years ago on a frigid, ice-covered Earth, glaciers stirred up ingredients for complex life by bulldozing land minerals and then depositing them in the ocean, according to a ...

UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Thomas Algeo has been studying the planet's five major mass extinctions since the Ordovician Period, when global sea levels were much higher than today. In a ...