Laboratory chemists are now edging closer to the moment when lifeless molecules first organized into the chemistry that would eventually support complex organisms. By recreating key early-Earth ...

Scientists believed that the first complex life on Earth formed 635 million years ago, but new evidence suggested otherwise. It pushed back the origins of life to 2.1 billion years ago, 1.5 billion ...

(CNN) — More than half a billion years ago on a frigid, ice-covered Earth, glaciers stirred up ingredients for complex life by bulldozing land minerals and then depositing them in the ocean, according ...

Around 700 million years ago, Earth was a frozen, white sphere, its rocky surface buried kilometers under ice. Despite the barren landscape, the evolution of complex life in the oceans was about to ...

Relative plate motions and plate boundary geometries are from Cao et al. (2024), with plate motions placed in a mantle reference frame. Continents are light grey, with continental margins shown in ...