Scientists are trying to understand how complex life emerged on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Our microbial ancestors could be the key.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. MIT-led research suggests microbes used oxygen hundreds of millions of years before Earth’s Great Oxidation Event. (CREDIT: ...

Eukaryotes—the building blocks of complex life—appeared on Earth 1.7 billion years ago, and now scientists have solved a ...

Around 2.3 billion years ago, the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) marked a major turning point in Earth’s history. The increase ...

For decades, scientists have believed that complex life began when two very different microbes joined forces, eventually giving rise to plants, animals, and fungi. But one major puzzle remained: how ...

A new study suggests that ancient microbes once cast as oxygen haters may have actually learned to use the gas, offering a clue to how the first complex cells — and, eventually, all plants and animals ...

Learn how oxygen’s early rise could have given complex life the energy boost it needed to evolve.

Ancient microbes tied to our earliest ancestors could use oxygen, reshaping ideas about how complex life began on Earth.

Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key oxygen-processing enzyme back hundreds of millions of years before the Great ...