Scientists are trying to understand how complex life emerged on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Our microbial ancestors could be the key.

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

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

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 ...

Learn how oxygen’s early rise could have given complex life the energy boost it needed to evolve.

A team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has produced what may be the strongest evidence yet that the ...

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

Scientists propose that eukaryotes formed when an Asgard archaeon entered into a close partnership with an alphaproteobacterium. Over time, the two organisms became permanently linked. The ...

Complex cells are thought to be the result of a union between two ancient microorganisms, but scientists have long been ...

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 ...

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 ...

The evolution of complex life forms may have gotten a jump start billions of years ago, when geologic events operating over millions of years caused large quantities of phosphorus to wash into the ...