Understanding microbial communities can give clues to how life shaped the Earth billions of years ago – and help find signs of life on distant planets. Life has shaped the chemical and geological ...

A future astronaut traipsing across the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers — Spirit and Opportunity — might be squishing into a welcome mat of microbes, according to one NASA scientist.

After sustaining seemingly catastrophic hurricane damage, a primordial groundcover vital to sustaining a multitude of coastal lifeforms bounced back to life in a matter of months. The finding, co-led ...

Despite bearing witness to its own increase in Earth's atmosphere by around 2.5 to 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen has had relatively little to say about its own early history until now. A recent ...

These were commonly so abundant that microbial mats basically covered much of the Earth’s ocean seafloors. Then during the Cambrian, a little more than a half billion years ago, animals evolved and ...

Smithsonian scientists study saline lakes in the Chilean desert to travel back in time to ancient Earth and beyond Emma Saaty This saline pond system in the Salar de Llamara region of northern Chile’s ...

Brendan Paul Burns and Kimberley L. Gallagher do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no ...

Western Australia’s Pilbara region isn’t known for its hospitality to life. Dry creek beds carve paths through dusty red earth, and razor-sharp grasses cover the area’s low hills. In this place with ...

After sustaining seemingly catastrophic hurricane damage, a primordial groundcover vital to sustaining a multitude of coastal lifeforms bounced back to life in a matter of months. The finding, co-led ...