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 ...

Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

A study presents a striking example of cooperative organization among cells as a potential force in the evolution of multicellular life. The study is based on the fluid dynamics of cooperative feeding ...

For decades, scientists assumed that life on Earth emerged through a chain of highly improbable flukes. But a new theory suggests it may have instead arrived just in time. When you purchase through ...

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 ...

An international collaboration between four scientists from Mainz, Valencia, Madrid, and Zurich has published new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shedding light on the ...

Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago. The ...