The oldest eukaryotes, the ancestors of all complex life on Earth, lived nearly 1.7 billion years ago in shallow, oxygenated ...

For decades, scientists have believed that complex life began when two very different microbes joined forces, eventually giving rise to plants, animals, and fungi. But one major puzzle remained: how ...

More than 2 billion years ago, long before Earth's atmosphere contained oxygen, one hardy group of microbes may have already evolved to live with the gas, setting the stage for the rise of complex ...

Analysis of 1.7 billion year old rock cores from northern Australia reveals that the earliest known complex organisms lived ...