Every so often, life on Earth steps onto a nearly empty playing field and faces a spectacular opportunity. Something major changes—in the atmosphere or in the oceans, or in the organisms themselves ...

Beyond its implications for artificial intelligence, the research supports the idea that mass extinctions actually speed up evolution by unleashing new creativity in adaptations. Computer scientists ...

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction event, marking the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods approximately 66 million years ago, stands as one of the most profound ...

Recent research showed that an artificially constructed RNA self-replicating system modeling primitive life at the origin of life evolved to become more prone to extinction under certain experimental ...

For decades, the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs has stood as a symbol of total planetary devastation. But hidden within the chaos it unleashed was the seed of a biological rebirth. In ...

ANN ARBOR—Shortly after an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, life for non-avian dinosaurs ended, but the evolutionary story for the early ancestors of birds began. The fossil record ...

The questions Prof. David Jablonski asks aren’t the little ones. “How do you go from a monkey hanging out in a tree, to an organism who can build electric guitars, and air conditioners, and trains, ...

A remarkable fish species, the Amazon molly, has defied evolutionary norms by surviving for 100,000 years without males.

Press releases are posted on Independent.com as a free community service. Environmental historian and author Daniel Lewis will deliver a free illustrated lecture based on his book Belonging on an ...