Over 150 years ago, a fossilized organism known as Prototaxites emerged as an enigma regarding what early land life may have ...

Learn about Prototaxites, a bizarre group of prehistoric organisms that fall within an unknown lineage of extinct life.

Learn how one-celled organisms, or single-celled organisms, helped build complex life.

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 ...

Prototaxites are something of a prehistoric mystery. They were the first giant organisms on land, towering over ancient ...

This figure presents a modern tree of Life, highlighting eukaryotes (organisms with complex cells) based on genome-scale analyses from Valt et al. (2025). The newly identified and ancient supergroup ...

Laboratory chemists are now edging closer to the moment when lifeless molecules first organized into the chemistry that would eventually support complex organisms. By recreating key early-Earth ...

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

Researchers have laid out the case for complex life evolving 2.1 billion years ago, but not everyone is convinced it started so early. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

The world is full of unusual unicellular organisms and microbes, many of which have not been discovered yet. In 2017, scientists identified a single-celled marine organism called Chromosphaera ...

In a blow to anyone dreaming that complex life may exist elsewhere in the universe, a new study suggests we're unlikely to ...