As creatures made up of trillions of cells, it’s easy for us to look down on single-celled organisms, but new research from Harvard suggests that some of them may be capable of more complex ...

Of all the organisms that photosynthesize, land plants have the most complex form. How did this morphology emerge? A team of scientists has taken a deep dive into the evolutionary history of ...

In the beginning, life was small. For billions of years, all life on Earth was microscopic, consisting mostly of single cells. Then suddenly, about 570 million years ago, complex organisms including ...

Dec. 13 (UPI) --Scientists have long wondered why the planet's first complex organisms emerged in the cold, dark depths of the ocean, where food and sun are in short supply. Now, researchers at ...

Biologists are quietly rewriting what it means to be alive, and the human body has become one of their strangest frontiers.

A microscopic creature from a boiling hot spring in Northern California has just reset the upper limit for how hot complex ...

Researchers have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how ...

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans. It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. The Universe was already two-thirds of its present age by the time the ...

Liquid samples of different algal species investigated in the study, all stored in the Culture Collection of Algae at Göttingen University. Of all the organisms that photosynthesize, land plants have ...

Microscope image of the multicellular alga Streptosarcina arenaria, another terrestrial alga, which inhabits dry and tropical areas. (scale is 10 µm, corresponding to 0.01 mm). Credit: Tatyana ...