Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and ...

New evidence from rocks, molecules and machine learning is forcing scientists to redraw the opening chapters of Earth’s story, pushing the first stirrings of biology far closer to the planet’s violent ...

Stone tools found in Israel are at least 1.9 million years old, showing humans left Africa earlier than scientists once believed.

Bacteria, among the oldest of life forms, have lived in seemingly every possible habitat on the planet, from ocean trenches and mountaintops to hot springs and polar ice. Yet, they have left a limited ...