Origin of Life News

July 26, 2024

Top Headlines

Lampreys Possess a 'Jaw-Dropping' Evolutionary Origin

July 26, 2024 — Lampreys are one of only two living jawless vertebrates Jaws are formed by a key stem cell population called the neural crest New research reveals the gene regulatory changes that may explain morphological differences between jawed and jawless ...

New Study Supports Stable Mantle Chemistry Dating Back to Earth's Early Geologic History and Over Its Prodigious Evolution

July 24, 2024 — A new analysis of rocks thought to be at least 2.5 billion years old helps clarify the chemical history of Earth's mantle -- the geologic layer beneath the planet's crust. The findings hone ...

Ore-Some: New Date for Earth's Largest Iron Deposits Offers Clues for Future Exploration

July 22, 2024 — Research reveals that Earth's largest iron ore deposits -- in the Hamersley Province of Western Australia -- are about one billion years younger than previously believed, a discovery which could ...

New Snake Discovery Rewrites History, Points to North America's Role in Snake Evolution

July 19, 2024 — A new species of fossil snake unearthed in Wyoming is rewriting our understanding of snake evolution. The discovery, based on four remarkably well-preserved specimens found curled together in a ...

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Nanoscopic Imaging Aids in Understanding Protein, Tissue Preservation in Ancient Bones

July 23, 2024 — A pilot study shows that nanoscopic 3-D imaging of ancient bone not only provides further insight into the changes soft tissues undergo during ...

Ancient Microbes Offer Clues to How Complex Life Evolved

July 16, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how ...

'A History of Contact': Geneticists Are Rewriting the Narrative of Neanderthals and Other Ancient Humans

July 11, 2024 — Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the ...

The Plague May Have Caused the Downfall of the Stone Age Farmers

July 10, 2024 — Ancient DNA from bones and teeth hints at a role of the plague in Stone Age population collapse. Contrary to previous beliefs, the plague may have diminished Europe's populations long before the ...

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

First Ever 3D Reconstruction of 52,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Chromosomes Thanks to Serendipitously Freeze-Dried Skin

July 11, 2024 — An international research team has assembled the genome and 3D chromosomal structures of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth -- the first time such a ...

Ancient Dingo DNA Shows Modern Dingoes Share Little Ancestry With Modern Dog Breeds

July 8, 2024 — A study of ancient dingo DNA revealed that the distribution of modern dingoes across Australia, including those on K'gari (formerly Fraser Island), ...

Organic Material from Mars Reveals the Likely Origin of Life's Building Blocks

July 1, 2024 — Two samples from Mars together deliver clear evidence of the origin of Martian organic material. The study presents solid evidence for a prediction ...

Researchers Find Genetic Stability in a Long-Term Panamanian Hybrid Zone of Manakin Birds

June 26, 2024 — We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new ...

Why the Harsh Snowball Earth Kick-Started Our Earliest Multicellular Ancestors

June 27, 2024 — Why did multicellularity arise? Solving that mystery may help pinpoint life on other planets and explain the vast diversity and complexity seen on Earth today, from sea sponges to redwoods to human ...

Origins of Cumulative Culture in Human Evolution

June 17, 2024 — Cumulative culture -- the accumulation of technological modifications and improvements over generations -- allowed humans to adapt to a diversity of environments and challenges. But, it is unclear ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million ...

What the Geologic Record Reveals About How Oceans Were Oxygenated 2.3 Billion Years Ago

June 12, 2024 — Geochemists used thallium isotopes to track the rise and fall of free oxygen on Earth between 2.5 and 2.2 billion years ago, the process that enabled life as we know ...

Scientists Unlock Secrets of How Archaea, the Third Domain of Life, Makes Energy

June 11, 2024 — An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas. The findings explain how ...

The Solar System May Have Passed Through Dense Interstellar Clouds 2 Million Years Ago, Altering Earth's Climate

June 10, 2024 — Astrophysicists calculate the likelihood that Earth was exposed to cold, harsh interstellar clouds, a phenomenon not previously considered in geologic climate ...

'Missing' Early Sea Sponges Discovered

June 5, 2024 — Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

Crucial Shift in River Nile's Evolution During Ancient Egypt Discovered

June 3, 2024 — Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilization. Research ...

Fresh Findings: Earliest Evidence of Life-Bringing Freshwater on Earth

June 3, 2024 — New research has found evidence that fresh water on Earth, which is essential for life, appeared about four billion years ago -- five hundred million years earlier than previously ...

Kinship and Ancestry of the Celts in Baden-Württemberg, Germany

June 3, 2024 — The Celtic culture of the pre-Roman Iron Age in Western and Central Europe has left numerous traces to this day, not least in the form of enormous burial mounds and spectacular archaeological ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...

Scientists Uncover a Multibillion-Year Epic Written Into the Chemistry of Life

May 28, 2024 — Life evolved from simple geochemical processes present on the early Earth. However, the details of this transformation remain a mystery. In this study, researchers modeled the emergence of metabolic ...

How Killifish Embryos Use Suspended Animation to Survive Over 8 Months of Drought

May 28, 2024 — The African turquoise killifish lives in ephemeral ponds in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. To survive the annual dry season, the fish's embryos enter a state of extreme suspended animation or ...

On Repeat: Biologists Observe Recurring Evolutionary Changes, Over Time, in Stick Insects

May 24, 2024 — An evolutionary biologist reports evidence of repeatable evolution in populations of stick ...

Entomologist Sheds Light on 250-Year-Old Mystery of the German Cockroach

May 24, 2024 — Entomologists have solved the 250-year-old origin puzzle of the most prevalent indoor urban pest insect on the planet: the German cockroach. The team's research findings, representing the ...

Evolutionary History of Extinct Duck Revealed

May 20, 2024 — The study's findings show mergansers arrived in the New Zealand region at least seven million years ago from the Northern Hemisphere, in a separate colonisation event to that which led to the ...

Iconic Baobabs: The Origin and Long-Distance Travels of Upside Down Trees

May 15, 2024 — The research cracks the code on the iconic baobab tree's origin story, revealing their surprising origins in Madagascar and incredible long-distance dispersals to Africa and Australia. The study ...

Rock Steady: Study Reveals New Mechanism to Explain How Continents Stabilized

May 8, 2024 — Ancient, expansive tracts of continental crust called cratons have helped keep Earth's continents stable for billions of years, even as landmasses shift, mountains rise and oceans form. A new ...

Genomes of 'Star Algae' Shed Light on Origin of Plants

May 3, 2024 — Land plants cover the surface of our planet and often tower over us. They form complex bodies with multiple organs that consist of a broad range of cell types. Developing this morphological ...

Did a Magnetic Field Collapse Trigger the Emergence of Animals?

May 3, 2024 — Researchers uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period -- 635 to 541 million years ago -- ...