518-million-year-old fossil reveals vertebrates once had four eyes and extra organs that later shaped evolution.

Half a billion years ago, the first true eye emerged in Earth’s oceans. Fossils now reveal what that ancient crystal vision could actually see.

Imagine Earth at a time when it was almost unrecognizable—a landscape that was barren and with barely breathable air. That is what Earth looked like about 1.75 billion years ago. But scientists now ...

A fossil skull barely 1 inch long has proved to be a newborn reptile from Brazil’s Late Triassic, a period more than 230 million years ago when early reptiles dominated land ecosystems. Its tiny jaw ...

Lost fossils reveal that some of the first ocean predators went global astonishingly fast after Earth’s worst extinction.

Our Earth’s atmosphere was not always the safe haven it is today. New research, informed by ancient ocean fossils, provides a glimpse into a time when our planet’s atmosphere was inhospitable and ...

Some 252 million years ago, almost all life on Earth disappeared. Known as the Permian–Triassic mass extinction – or the Great Dying – this was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinction events ...

With its uniquely twisted jaw and sideways-facing teeth, the new species was a relic of an earlier and more experimental time in the evolution of life on Earth. Fossils discovered in Brazil show that ...

A newly described Patagonian fossil reveals the evolutionary origins and global spread of the tiny alvarezsaur dinosaurs.

Learn what amber fossils can teach us about ancient ecosystems and prehistoric insects.

The oldest fossils ever found are "direct evidence" of life on Earth 3.8 to 4.3 billion years ago when our planet was still in its infancy, researchers reported Wednesday. Even at the lower end of the ...

Maybe the first life on Earth was part of an 'RNA world.' Artur Plawgo/Science Photo Library via Getty Images How life on Earth started has puzzled scientists for a long time. And it still does.