Paleobiologist Geerat Vermeij is enthralled with mollusks. Their shells line the surfaces and fill the cabinets and drawers ...

A common type of error-correcting mechanism in biology is called kinetic proofreading. For example, if errors turn up when cells are making new DNA, enzymes can cut out incorrect nucleotides. They can ...

A major event in the evolution of organisms on earth was the development of complex, multicellular life forms made of eukaryotic cells, which are thought to have come from prokaryotic cells. Studies ...

A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ancient ...

The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology. They carry genetic material, but they cannot make proteins on ...

The origin of organisms with complex cells, known as eukaryotes, is one of the most crucial parts of life’s evolutionary story. All animals, plants, and fungi are eukaryotes, and if complex cells had ...

The intersection of human evolution and Earth’s environmental history brings together two areas of scientific study with exceptionally high public visibility and broad societal interest—human ...

Sleep helps even things out. It was Darwin's great insight that natural selection was the primary factor driving the evolution of organisms. His detailed research ultimately lead to the acceptance by ...