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 ...

What Scientists Found in 1.4 Billion-Year-Old Air Is Reshaping Our Understanding of Early Earth ...

By resurrecting a 3.2-billion-year-old enzyme and studying it inside living microbes, researchers at the University of ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

About 4.5 billion years ago, the most momentous event in the history of our planet occurred: a huge celestial body called Theia collided with the young Earth. How the collision unfolded and what ...

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 ...