New method reveals chemical signs of early microbial life in ancient Earth rocks, showing photosynthesis evolved much earlier ...

Learn how microscopic fossils reveal that tiny seafloor organisms were already feeding and recycling nutrients soon after one ...

Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Ediacaran period challenge what scientists thought was possible in sandstone. In the fossil record, creatures without hard shells or skeletons, such as ...

For more than a century, fossils meant bones, shells and the occasional imprint of a leaf. Now, a wave of research is showing that the most revealing relics of ancient organisms are not their shapes ...

While many dinosaurs and pterosaurs flaunted flamboyant feathers, early mammals were a dull lot. A study of the fossilised fur of six mammals that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods has ...

Geological and Evolutionary Setting of the Biota1 Geological time and the evolution of early life on Earth 2 The evolutionary significance of the Chengjiang biota 3 The discovery and initial study of ...

In a world that looked nothing like today’s, long before the rise of the dinosaurs or even the first trees, giant living towers stretched skyward from the Earth’s surface. Some reached heights of 26 ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth nearly wiped out life in the oceans. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, ...

Paleobiologist Scott Lakeram analyzes 300-million-year-old coal ball fossils to reveal prehistoric plant-insect interactions frozen in time Emma Saaty Over 20 ancient plant species are represented in ...