A 2020 astronaut photo shows the oasis town of Jubbah lurking within a paleolake in the wind shadow of Saudi Arabia's "two ...

Ancient microbial activity preserved in deep seafloor sediments challenges assumptions about where fragile traces of early ...

Experts reconstructed the genome of Treponema pallidum from 5,500-year-old human remains in Colombia, revealing an unknown ...

Millions of years before blue oceans and wandering continents, the Earth in its early days was a molten, tumultuous planet — a roiling mixture of rock and metal condensing within the nascent solar ...

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 ...

By resurrecting a 3.2-billion-year-old enzyme and studying it inside living microbes, researchers at the University of ...

Life on ancient Earth may have reflected red and purple light, suggesting the planet was once dominated by purple organisms.

New Curtin University research has revealed how massive ancient glaciers acted like giant bulldozers, reshaping Earth's surface and paving the way for complex life to flourish. The key to unlocking ...

Scientists say they have found geochemical traces of Earth’s ancient self hidden far below our feet, suggesting that parts of the planet that existed before the Moon-forming collision 4.5 billion ...

For decades, geologists labeled a billion-year stretch of Earth’s history—from 1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago—as the “Boring Billion.” They assumed not much occurred during the time: mountain building ...

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 ...