Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. We’ve pieced together a remarkably detailed timeline of ...

The findings suggest Jupiter's formation shaped the chemistry that helped make habitable worlds possible.

Scientists believe they’ve found evidence that life on Earth is over a billion years older than anyone believed was realistic. New research used machine learning to scan ancient meteorites and fossils ...

Billions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was hostile, with barely any oxygen and toxic conditions for life. Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute studied Japan’s iron-rich hot springs, ...

The question of when life began on Earth is as old as human culture. “It’s one of these fundamental human questions: When did life appear on Earth?” said Professor Martin Whitehouse of the Swedish ...

A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, ...

During Earth's ancient Snowball periods, when the entire planet was wrapped in ice, life may have endured in tiny meltwater ponds on the surface of equatorial glaciers. MIT researchers discovered that ...

ARLINGTON VA; March 3, 2026 – In 1976, Sir David Attenborough embarked on an ambitious three-year global odyssey to film Life on Earth, an innovative documentary of unprecedented scale. Attenborough ...