A new study suggests that ancient microbes once cast as oxygen haters may have actually learned to use the gas, offering a ...

A team led by Brett Baker at the University of Texas at Austin has found that some Asgard archaea, the ancient microbial group most closely related to all complex life on Earth, carried the molecular ...

For decades, scientists have believed that complex life began when two very different microbes joined forces, eventually ...

The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the arrival of all complex life on Earth has had an unsolved mystery at its heart. According to the theory, all plants, animals and fungi, known ...

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones.

New genomic research shows some Asgard archaea, ancestors of plants, animals, and fungi, tolerated and used oxygen. The finding supports the idea that complex life arose after oxygen levels surged and ...

Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and plants. Ten years ago, ...

Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, however, researchers examining deep-sea sediments discovered gene fragments that indicated a new and previously undiscovered form ...