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

Scientists discovered some of the oldest bony fish fossils in China. The fossils explain the early history of animals with backbones.

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.

Marine fossils discovered near the summit of Mount Everest reveal that the world’s highest mountain was once part of an ancient ocean floor before tectonic collisions lifted the Himalayas.

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 ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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.

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.

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 ...