Scientists have traced the origins of complex life to the breakup of the supercontinent Nuna 1.5 billion years ago. This tectonic shift reduced volcanic carbon emissions, expanded shallow seas, and ...

Sixty-six million years ago a 10-kilometer-wide space rock fell out of the sky over what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. When it hit Earth, it blew a Maryland-sized hole in the ...

Billions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was hostile, with barely any oxygen and toxic conditions for life. Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute studied Japan’s iron-rich hot springs, ...

More than half a billion years ago on a frigid, ice-covered Earth, glaciers stirred up ingredients for complex life by bulldozing land minerals and then depositing them in the ocean, according to a ...

Earth’s crust teems with subterranean life that we are only now beginning to understand. Credit...Illustration by Brian Rea. Animation By Delcan & Co. Supported by By Ferris Jabr Ferris Jabr is a ...