Fungi arose long before plants, shaping Earth with early soils and nutrient cycles. Their hidden legacy shows they may have ...

A stunning fossil discovery in the Grand Canyon has opened a new window into one of the most fascinating chapters in Earth’s ...

New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution sheds light on the timelines and pathways of evolution of fungi, finding ...

Chemical fossils from 635-million-year-old rocks suggest sponges were among Earth’s first animals, reshaping the story of early life.

New research shows fungi diversified nearly a billion years ago, shaping soils and ecosystems long before plants colonized ...

The findings show that the common ancestor of the extant fungi was about 1.4 to 900 million years ago. That is far earlier ...

Before the first trees sprouted on Earth, the planet’s barren landscape may already have been transformed by fungi.

Fungi may have shaped Earth’s landscapes long before plants appeared. By combining rare gene transfers with fossil evidence, researchers have traced fungal origins back nearly a billion years earlier ...

A team of scientists digging up some of the Earth’s oldest rocks has uncovered new chemical evidence that Earth’s first ...

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found algae-like fossils in meteorite fragments that landed in Sri Lanka last year. This is the strongest evidence yet of cometary panspermia -- that life on ...

Experts think they may have uncovered what the first ever animal on Earth looked like after ancient chemical signals were found. For as long as scientists have understood evolution, the debate over ...

New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution sheds light on the timelines and pathways of evolution of fungi, finding ...