"By following universal paralogs," says Kaçar, "we can connect the earliest steps of life on Earth to the tools of modern ...

Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

Every organism alive on Earth, from oak trees to octopuses to the bacteria in our gut, belongs to a single extended family. Genetic evidence points back to one ancestral cell, a last common forebear ...

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 ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. A study suggests that this organism likely ...

Ancient duplicated genes are giving scientists their first real clues about what life was like before all life on Earth ...

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 ...

A composite view of the Earth constructed by NASA from multiple satellite images Editor at Large Human evolution is a story writ slow. It’s been about 3.8 billion years since life on Earth emerged and ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last ...