Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much ...

The study of early Earth microbial life and its associated organic matter provides crucial insights into the origins and evolution of life on our planet. Recent work has illuminated the remarkable ...

The surface of our world has been in a constant state of flux for millions of years. Continents have wandered, oceans have ...

More than four billion years ago, Earth was a very different place. Pools of water froze and thawed in cycles, minerals shaped reactions, and molecules bumped into each other by chance. Out of this ...

By resurrecting a 3.2-billion-year-old enzyme and studying it inside living microbes, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created a new way to improve our understanding of the ...

AI models used ancient zircons to reveal Earth’s earliest crust chemistry, solving a long-standing geologic mystery. (CREDIT: CC BY-SA 4.0) In Earth’s early days, more than 4 billion years ago, the ...

Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents formed during the Archean time, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Their findings ...

Scientists have confirmed that a tiny zircon crystal is the oldest piece of the Earth's crust, at 4.4 billion years old. The crystal was discovered on a sheep ranch in Perth, Australia in 2001, but ...

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, possesses a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere that bears striking similarities to that of early Earth. Scientists are fascinated by Titan’s atmospheric composition and its ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. We’ve pieced together a remarkably detailed timeline of ...