Origin of Life News

May 20, 2025

Top Headlines

Research Team Traces Evolutionary History of Bacterial Circadian Clock on Ancient Earth

May 20, 2025 — To better understand the circadian clock in modern-day cyanobacteria, a research team has studied ancient timekeeping systems. They examined the oscillation of the clock proteins KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC ...

Light-to-Electricity Nanodevice Reveals How Earth's Oldest Surviving Cyanobacteria Worked

May 16, 2025 — Scientists have decoded the atomic structure of Photosystem I from a 3-billion-year-old cyanobacteria lineage, offering a unique look at early oxygen-producing photosynthesis. The ancient nanodevice, ...

Ancient Ocean Sediments Link Changes in Currents to Cooling of Northern Hemisphere 3.6 Million Years Ago

May 16, 2025 — New research from an international group looking at ancient sediment cores in the North Atlantic has for the first time shown a strong correlation between sediment changes and a marked period of ...

Asians Made Humanity's Longest Prehistoric Migration and Shaped the Genetic Landscape in the Americas

May 15, 2025 — An international genomics study has revealed that early Asians undertook humanity's longest known prehistoric migration. These early humans, who roamed the earth over 100,000 years ago, are believed ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:51pm EDT

Digital Reconstruction Reveals 80 Steps of Prehistoric Life

May 15, 2025 — A dinosaur's 40-second journey more than 120 million years ago has been brought back to life by a research team using advanced digital modelling ...

Fossil Tracks Show Reptiles Appeared on Earth Up to 40 Million Years Earlier

May 14, 2025 — The origin of reptiles on Earth has been shown to be up to 40 million years earlier than previously thought -- thanks to evidence discovered at an ...

Researchers Map 7,000-Year-Old Genetic Mutation That Protects Against HIV

May 9, 2025 — Modern HIV medicine is based on a common genetic mutation. Now, researchers have traced where and when the mutation arose -- and how it protected our ancestors from ancient ...

Comb Jellies Reveal Ancient Origins of Animal Genome Regulation

May 7, 2025 — Life depends on genes being switched on and off at exactly the right time. Even the simplest living organisms do this, but usually over short distances across the DNA sequence, with the on/off switch ...

A Fully Automated Tool for Species Tree Inference

May 5, 2025 — Engineers are making it easier for researchers from a broad range of backgrounds to understand how different species are evolutionarily related, and support the transformative biological and medical ...

Why Did Some Ancient Animals Fossilize While Others Vanished?

May 1, 2025 — Why do some ancient animals become fossils while others disappear without a trace? A new study reveals that part of the answer lies in the body itself. The research shows that an animal's size and ...

Geobiology: Iron, Sulfur, Heat -- And First Life

Apr. 30, 2025 — The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their ...

Phoenician Culture Spread Mainly Through Cultural Exchange

Apr. 23, 2025 — Ancient DNA analysis challenges our understanding of the ancient Phoenician-Punic civilization. An international team of researchers analyzing genome-wide data from 210 ancient individuals has found ...

The Eukaryotic Cell Emerged as an Evolutionary Algorithmic Phase Transition

Apr. 21, 2025 — An international collaboration has published groundbreaking research, shedding light on the most significant increase in complexity in the history of life's evolution on Earth: the origin of the ...

How Activity in Earth's Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans Into Asia and Africa

Apr. 21, 2025 — What roils beneath the Earth's surface may feel a world away, but the activity can help forge land masses that dictate ocean circulation, climate ...

Unlocking the Genetic Basis of Adaptive Evolution: Study Reveals Complex Chromosomal Rearrangements in a Stick Insect

Apr. 18, 2025 — Scientists report adaptive divergence in cryptic color pattern is underlain by two distinct, complex chromosomal rearrangements, where millions of bases of DNA were flipped backwards and moved from ...

Environmental Variability Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation Among Humans: A Simulation-Based Analysis

Apr. 18, 2025 — Researchers have demonstrated that intensified environmental variability (EV) can promote the evolution of cooperation through simulation based on evolutionary game theory. This result offers a new ...

Scientists May Have Solved a Puzzling Space Rock Mystery

Apr. 14, 2025 — Researchers may have answered one of space science's long-running questions -- and it could change our understanding of how life began. Carbon-rich asteroids are abundant in space yet make up ...

Mammoth Genetic Diversity Throughout the Last Million Years

Apr. 9, 2025 — A new genomic study has uncovered long-lost genetic diversity in mammoth lineages spanning over a million years, providing new insights into the evolutionary history of these ...

Machine Learning Helps Construct an Evolutionary Timeline of Bacteria

Apr. 3, 2025 — Scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through ...

First Ancient Genomes from the Green Sahara Deciphered

Apr. 2, 2025 — An international team has sequenced the first ancient genomes from the so-called Green Sahara, a period when the largest desert in the world temporarily turned into a humid savanna-like environment. ...

Early Earth's First Crust Composition Discovery Rewrites Geological Timeline

Apr. 2, 2025 — Modern continental rocks carry chemical signatures from the very start of our planet's history, challenging current theories about plate ...

How Calcium May Have Unlocked the Origins of Life's Molecular Asymmetry

Mar. 27, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered a surprising role for calcium in shaping the building blocks of life. Their study reveals that calcium ions help determine the molecular 'handedness' (chirality) ...

Scientists Uncover Key Mechanism in Evolution: Whole-Genome Duplication Drives Long-Term Adaptation

Mar. 26, 2025 — Scientists uncovered how whole-genome duplication emerges and remains stable over thousands of generations of evolution in the ...

New Species Revealed After 25 Years of Study on 'Inside Out' Fossil -- And Named After Discoverer's Mum

Mar. 26, 2025 — A new species of fossil is 444 million years-old with soft insides perfectly preserved. Research 'ultramarathon' saw palaeontologist puzzled by bizarre fossil for 25 ...

Earliest Days of Earth's Formation

Mar. 26, 2025 — New research sheds light on the earliest days of the earth's formation and potentially calls into question some earlier assumptions in planetary science about the early years of rocky planets. ...

Were Large Soda Lakes the Cradle of Life?

Mar. 25, 2025 — Life needs sufficient phosphorus. However, the element is scarce, not only today but also at the time of the origin of life. So where was there sufficient phosphorus four billion years ago for life ...

The Evolution of Low-Temperature Adapted Enzymes

Mar. 25, 2025 — Enzymes originally evolved in high-temperature environments and later adapted to lower temperatures as Earth cooled. Scientists discovered that a key shift in enzyme function occurred over ...

Organic Molecules of Unprecedented Size Discovered on Mars

Mar. 24, 2025 — The longest organic molecules identified to date on Mars have recently been detected. These long carbon chains, containing up to 12 consecutive carbon atoms, could exhibit features similar to the ...

Biologists Discover Ancient Neurohormone That Controls Appetite

Mar. 24, 2025 — Biologists have discovered that bombesin, a neurohormone controlling appetite in humans, also regulates feeding in starfish, revealing its ancient evolutionary origin dating back over 500 million ...

Origin of Life: How Microbes Laid the Foundation for Complex Cells

Mar. 21, 2025 — Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and ...

From Dinosaurs to Birds: The Origins of Feather Formation

Mar. 20, 2025 — Feathers, essential for thermoregulation, flight, and communication in birds, originate from simple appendages known as proto-feathers, which were present in certain dinosaurs.By studying embryonic ...

Genetic Study Reveals Hidden Chapter in Human Evolution

Mar. 18, 2025 — Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the ...

'Microlightning' in Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life on Earth

Mar. 14, 2025 — A study shows that electrical charges in sprays of water can cause chemical reactions that form organic molecules from inorganic materials. The findings provide evidence that microlightning may have ...

Are Volcanoes Behind the Oxygen We Breathe?

Mar. 10, 2025 — It is widely believed that Earth's atmosphere has been rich in oxygen for about 2.5 billion years due to a relatively rapid increase in microorganisms capable of performing photosynthesis. ...