Earth’s history is filled with incredible milestones, and the emergence of the first animals is one of the most captivating.

But while lifeless during that time, the planet was already covered by vast oceans dotted with hydrothermal vent systems that released large amounts of ferrous iron into the water. The earliest ...

About 800 million years ago, oxygen levels reached about 21 percent and began to breathe life into more complex organisms. The oxygen-rich ozone layer was also established, shielding the Earth's ...

Left, a fossilized thecamoebian believed to have lived 720-635 mya. Right, a specimen from a group of modern amoebozoan testate amoebae Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the ...

Our solar system’s path through the Milky Way may have stirred Earth’s ancient climate ... James Webb spots a dead galaxy just 700 million years post Big Bang 'Jupiter’s defence fails ...

Between 52 and 57 million years ago, the Earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions actually extended all the way into the mid-latitudes (around northern Spain or the central United States for ...

The study also provides a new approach to solving one of the biggest enduring scientific mysteries: when did plate tectonics begin?

Our planet’s first known mass extinction happened about 440 million years ago. Species diversity on Earth had been increasing over a period of roughly 30 million years, but that would come to a ...

A crater at the edge of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico was created by a massive asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago At the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, an ...

Over two hundred fifty million years ago, India, Africa ... the collision of India with Asia we must first look beneath the Earth's surface. The continents are carried by the Earth's tectonic ...

But a recent study suggests that the timeline actually stretches further back — beyond the evolution of early humans and past the age of dinosaurs — to 200 to 300 million years ago when a hot ...