Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

For decades, scientists assumed that life on Earth emerged through a chain of highly improbable flukes. But a new theory suggests it may have instead arrived just in time. When you purchase through ...

For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

Daniel Brady Mills receives funding from the German Research Foundation. Jason Wright works for Penn State University, where his research in the search for life in the universe is supported by ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A STAR resides near the edge of a supernova remnant 15,000 light-years from Earth, that cycles in radio wave intensity every 44 ...

Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago. The ...

Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

The timeline of terrestrial evolution holds surprises. While scientists thought complex life required oxygen, a recent discovery shows it began forming in oceans deprived of this element, nearly a ...

Tsukuba, Japan—Cooperation is fundamental to human societies. Building on the hypothesis that heightened environmental variability in Africa during the Middle Stone Age influenced behavioral evolution ...