Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key ...

Using primitive meteorites called chondrites as their models, earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have performed outgassing calculations and shown that the early Earth ...

IMAGE: A new study by CU-Boulder researchers indicates a thick organic haze shrouding Earth several billion years ago was similar to the one now hovering over Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. University ...

Researchers recreated conditions from billions of years ago and found that Earth’s young atmosphere could make key molecules linked to life. These sulfur-rich compounds, including certain amino acids, ...

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) at ~2.4–2.3 Ga and the Neoproterozoic Oxidation Event (NOE) at ~0.8–0.54 Ga, were transformative events that catalyzed the development of global geological, geochemical ...

Earth’s atmosphere might have contributed to the origin of life more than previously thought. In a study published Dec. 1 in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," CU Boulder ...

Researchers mapped enzyme sequences from several thousand modern species onto an evolutionary tree of life. Their findings suggest that, shortly after cyanobacteria evolved the ability to produce ...

Early Earth might have shimmered in shades of purple, not green, according to the Purple Earth Hypothesis. Researchers ...

India, Feb. 9 -- Oxygen is a vital and constant presence on Earth today. But that hasn't always been the case. It wasn't until around 2.3 billion years ago that oxygen became a permanent fixture in ...