For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

Explore 25 Major Events in Earth's 4.5 Billion Year History. Discover pivotal moments from its formation to the rise of life.

The story of Charles Darwin’s life. His theory of evolution changed the way we understood our place in the world.

The emergence of the first biopolymers and their building blocks on the early Earth is considered a key moment in the origin of life (OoL), but how life began on the prebiotic Earth from a pile of ...

"So much work on the origin of multicellular life focuses on chemistry. We wanted to investigate the role of physical forces in the process," says lead author Shashank Shekhar, Assistant Professor of ...

Stored in an open-air warehouse in tropical Darwin, Australia, are dozens of trays containing cylindrical cores of rock. They ...

part 1. Slow victory : Darwin and the rise of Darwinism -- 1. Darwin and the Beagle -- 2. "Like confessing a murder" : the origin of Origin of species -- 3. Deep time discovered : putting dates to the ...