This is the Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA ... dated LUCA as young as 3.5 or 3.8 billion years ago, so the new timeline accelerates evolution by a few hundred million years.

But the genetic and developmental innovations plants used to make the leap to land have been enduring secrets of nature. Now, an international team of researchers, writing this week (Oct. 5, 2015 ...

Studying how algae made the leap provides clues to how organisms such as plants and animals evolved from single-celled ancestors. Mediating conflict between the cooperating cells is the key.

Tony Marshall/Getty Images In 1990, scientists found the fossil of ancient algae that they believe may be the oldest known direct ancestor of modern plants and animals. But the exact age of the ...

Archaeologists have discovered ancient tools and bones in China that, once again, shake up the timeline of the human ... that hominins – the group of our ancestors that are more closely related ...

All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA ... in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer.

The landmarks on these samples provided an evolutionary framework from which researchers could predict a timeline for the skull structure, or 'morphology', of our ancient ancestors. They then fed ...

A human skull on display with earlier ancestor skulls and a picture of a ... This theoretical timeline means that language, where the brain associates words with objects or concepts and arranges ...

a major leap in scientific knowledge that still resonates a half-century later. Many ancient human ancestors are known from fragments. But about 40 percent of Lucy’s skeleton was recovered ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The common ancestor of all tetrapods (including humans) was previously thought to have emerged at the dawn of the Carboniferous period.

The genetic and developmental innovations plants used to make the leap to land have been enduring secrets of ... symbiosis between plants and microbes likely arose in a common ancestor of green algae ...