Properly deciphering the branching pathways of evolution could unlock the history of every component of natural biology.

All species on Earth, both living and extinct, are related. We know this because of a biological tool called the tree of life. This "tree" takes the form of a diagram that maps the relationships ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have ...

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish. If ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Last month, the Bean Life Science Museum opened its new exhibit, the Evolutionary Tree of Life, to the public. “It was a fabulous feeling,” said museum director Michael Whiting. Whiting said the ...

Defense systems found in all complex life on Earth came from "Asgard." The ancestor of plants, animals and fungi evolved around 2 billion years ago, likely from a group of complex microbes called ...

In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists at Trinity College Dublin have identified a "universal thermal performance curve" that governs how all living organisms respond to temperature. This finding ...

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by ...