Learn more about the top theories about how life began on Earth, and how it may not have started from scratch.

Ancient duplicated genes are giving scientists their first real clues about what life was like before all life on Earth ...

Living organisms share an ancestor called the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. LUCA is estimated to have lived ...

Scientists think they’ve found a way to investigate the creation of cell membranes and DNA genomes that gave rise to the last universal common ancestor.

Scientists have uncovered the earliest chemical evidence of life on Earth, in a discovery that could revolutionise our understanding of how ancient molecules evolved. As part of a groundbreaking study ...

Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

Ancient microbes tied to our earliest ancestors could use oxygen, reshaping ideas about how complex life began on Earth.

New method reveals chemical signs of early microbial life in ancient Earth rocks, showing photosynthesis evolved much earlier than believed.

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don't yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology, or when the first primitive life forms appeared. But what ...

How did life begin on Earth? While scientists have theories, they don’t yet fully understand the precise chemical steps that led to biology or when the first primitive life forms appeared. But what if ...