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

Lynn Margulis's theory on symbiosis was rejected by fifteen journals before it rewrote how we understand life itself.

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled ...

There is still so much we don’t understand about the origin of life on Earth. The definition of life itself is a source of debate among scientists, but most researchers agree on the fundamental ...

There is still so much we don't understand about the origin of life on Earth. The definition of life itself is a source of debate among scientists, but most researchers agree on the fundamental ...

Billions of years of evolution have made modern cells incredibly complex. Inside cells are small compartments called organelles that perform specific functions essential for the cell’s survival and ...

We've been looking at nature the wrong way, argues Rowan Hooper. If we stop focusing on the individual, we get a whole new picture of how life on Earth – and elsewhere – may have begun ...

In an important new paper forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, Robert Shapiro (New York University) argues against the widely held theory that the origin of life began ...

In a new book, astrophysicist Mario Livio describes how the existence of life on Earth can be traced back to an RNA-based “protocell.” The following is an excerpt from Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...

When and where did life on Earth begin? What ingredients does the recipe for life require? Is there life out there beyond the stars, and if so, did it arise in the same way? Or are we alone in the ...