The molecular clock theory posits that genetic changes happen steadily and gradually, offering a reliable means for peering into the past and theorizing when complex life first emerged. However, there ...

University of Queensland scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through ...

Bacteria, among the oldest of life forms, have lived in seemingly every possible habitat on the planet, from ocean trenches and mountaintops to hot springs and polar ice. Yet, they have left a limited ...

Bacterial evolution and oxygen adaptation: A timeline built from genomic, fossil, and chemical data. Colors show oxygen states: anaerobic (blue), aerobic (red), and proportion of aerobic lineages in ...

The genetic code acts as life’s instruction manual, telling cells how to build proteins from DNA and RNA. Though it's a marvel of molecular precision, the path it took to evolve remains unclear. Fresh ...

Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the distinction between hominids and hominins and traces the evolutionary ...

New discoveries of fossil clawed footprints from Australia, published in Nature, push the origin of reptiles back in time by at least 35 million years and change the entire timeline for the origin of ...