In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, the late Harvard scientist Stephen Jay Gould imagined rewinding life’s history to an early ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

Evolution is perhaps the most extraordinary story ever told—a tale spanning billions of years that connects every living thing on Earth through an intricate web of shared ancestry. From the tiniest ...

Palaeontologists have found new evidence that the early ancestors of amphibians, reptiles and mammals did not have a larval ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

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 ...

Evolution and geologic history reveal how life and Earth have changed over time. The National Academies explore fossil records, genetic evidence, and natural processes that shape our planet.

For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

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 ...