Scientists in Japan have discovered a previously unknown giant virus, offering new insight into this enigmatic category of ...

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 bizarre fossil called Prototaxites, which was the largest life-form on land 400 million years ago, may have been a ...

In fact, why and how multicellular life evolved has long puzzled biologists. The first known instance of multicellularity was about 2.5 billion years ago, when marine cells (cyanobacteria) hooked up ...

We've heard a lot about how important carbon and water are to life, but sulfur? Researchers think that sulfur may have actually been essential for organisms to make the transition from single-celled ...

A new study shows that multicelled organisms like the metazoan daphnia (pictured) require a tenfold increase in energy compared with protists for their growth, maintenance and survival. The high cost ...

The world would look very different without multicellular organisms – take away the plants, animals, fungi, and seaweed, and Earth starts to look like a wetter, greener version of Mars. But precisely ...

Scientists have discovered the fossil of what may be the earliest multicellular animal ever found. Dating back a billion years, the microscopic fossil contains two distinct cell types, potentially ...

On the one hand, it would mean that multicellular life takes on average (ha!) 1.5 billion years less to evolve than we previously thought it would. 1.5 billion years is a very respectable difference, ...

Stentor coeruleus is a giant unicellular, filter-feeding protist that uses the coordinated motion of its oral ciliary structure to generate feeding currents. These currents allow the organism to ...

Over 3,000 generations of laboratory evolution, researchers watched as their model organism, 'snowflake yeast,' began to adapt as multicellular individuals. In new research, the team shows how ...