Mystery Fossil Challenges What We Know About Early Land Life, A Major Rewrite for Evolutionary History ...

Geerat Vermeij's latest book explores a new approach to thinking about the evolution of life through the accumulation of 'power,' defined as the ability of organisms to take up or expend energy. (UC ...

Imagine zooming out on a giant family tree that includes every bird you have ever seen. Ostriches sprint across open plains, hummingbirds hover at flowers, penguins slice through cold seas, and eagles ...

Scientists provide fresh insights on the origins of life, presenting compelling evidence supporting the 'RNA World' hypothesis. The study unveils an RNA enzyme that can make accurate copies of other ...

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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 ...

Humanity may not be extraordinary but rather the natural evolutionary outcome for our planet and likely others, according to a new model for how intelligent life developed on Earth. Humanity may not ...

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor that lived roughly four billion years ago. This so-called “last universal common ancestor” represents the most ancient organism that researchers can study.

Microbiologists Patrick Moreira and Purificación López-García, together with virologists Arturo Ludmir and Lynn Enquist, are at the center of a sharp debate over whether viruses count as living ...

Life-history traits represent organisms’ strategies to navigate the fitness trade-offs between survival and reproduction. Eric Charnov developed three dimensionless metrics to quantify fundamental ...