Explore the history of life on Earth, from 3.5-billion-year-old fossils to the vast diversity of species on our planet today.

We know that Darwinian evolution acts on all forms of life, but does evolution act on non-living materials as well? Otto and his team used a system of three different self-replicating molecules, that, ...

A chemical compound essential to all living things has been synthesised in a lab in conditions that could have occurred on early Earth, suggesting it played a role at the outset of life, finds a new ...

Basic biology textbooks will tell you that all life on Earth is built from four types of molecules: proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. And each group is vital for every living ...

A field study shows how phosphate can concentrate in environments known as 'soda lakes' at the very high levels needed for the basic molecules of life to emerge. A shallow, salty lake in western ...

In living organisms today, complex molecules like RNA and DNA are constructed with the help of enzymes. So how did these molecules form before life (and enzymes) existed? Why did some molecules end up ...

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has spent more than 13 years exploring the 3.5-billion-year-old Gale crater, slowly climbing a central mound known as Mount Sharp. Satellite data suggest this formation may ...

The asteroid Bennu, visited by a NASA robotic probe five years ago, contained many of the basic building blocks for life as we know it, including amino acids, according to long-awaited research ...