Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A new study uncovers how amino acids could have linked with RNA under early Earth conditions, shedding light on the origin of life ...

Around 2.3 billion years ago, the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) marked a major turning point in Earth’s history. The increase ...

Scientists may have discovered a reaction that provides the “missing link” to help explain how early life formed on Earth about 4 billion years ago. All living things contain ribonucleic acid, ...

There are many open questions about how our planet formed 4.55 billion years ago: When did plate tectonics start? When did the Earth's mantle begin to vigorously circulate in a process called ...

In Earth’s early days, more than 4 billion years ago, the surface was a dangerous and unpredictable place. Violent volcanoes, crashing meteorites, and constant tectonic activity repeatedly resurfaced ...

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 ...

Chemists at UCL and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth – a key process in the origin of life. Scientists ...

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 ...