Did lightning provide food for life’s beginning?
Lightning bolts can be deadly or destructive, but some researchers propose they might also have supplied essential elements for the first…
Category: What happened in Earth’s past?
What was the Earth like a long time ago? What have archaeologists found? What was it like before life started? How did life come to be?
How smart were the dinosaurs?
A researcher from Vanderbilt University inferred dinosaur intelligence from fossilized skulls. She used the skulls to estimate the number of…
Microbes entombed in ancient salts could help search for life on Mars
Geologists discovered microbes trapped in 830-million-year-old salt minerals similar to those found on Mars.
Why did a bunch of asteroids hit the Earth billions of years ago?
The first cells of life on Earth had a lot to contend with. Conditions were harsh and unpredictable. The air was thick with volcanic gases.…
Where did all these plants come from?
Without plants on earth, we would not be here. But, where did plants come from? Did they suddenly just sprout out of the ground? Scientists…
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are way older than penicillin
Remember the classic chases where Wile E. Coyote tries to catch Roadrunner but is often outsmarted? It turns out that bacteria have to…
Ancient bacteria leave behind fossils, too!
Scientists used genetic technology to identify the different roles of bacteria present in ancient fossil formations called stromatolites.
A detailed look at a rare meteorite
A carbonaceous meteorite that fell in Costa Rica holds organic compounds that are preserved from the earliest stages of our solar system,…
Building the molecules of life in the lab
The hyperbranched polymer scaffold could have been the early primitive base for the emergence of life. @t_z_jia @CerberaOdollam…
Searching for the first light of fireflies
Fireflies are bioluminescent, which means they glow. But were they always that way? Why do they glow? Scientists used genetics tools to find…