First up on our list of oldest fossils ever found are the microfossils of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt. The rock sequence ...

Earth has experienced both hot and cold periods over time, though warm times have been more common. That’s true of the last 485 million years, as seen in this timeline reported in 2024. Our genus, ...

The Archean eon was a time when Earth's atmosphere and ocean were devoid of gaseous oxygen, but also when the first organisms to generate energy from sunlight evolved.

A major hurdle in understanding how the continents formed during the Archean Eon (four to 2.5 billion years ago) has been identifying the building blocks of Earth's early crust.

A new study suggests that ancient L-form bacteria could explain the strange microfossils found in some of the world’s oldest rocks.

All life uses nutrients such as zinc and copper to form proteins. The oldest lifeforms evolved in the Archean Eon, three and a half billion years before the dinosaurs first appeared.

From the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the Mesozoic Era — the so-called “Age of Dinosaurs” -- right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age.

When a meteorite with the mass of four Mount Everests hit Earth 3.2 billion years ago, it caused global chaos and provided an unexpected silver lining for life.

The only period of Earth’s geologic history known to include such high temperatures was between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago during the Archean Eon. Consequently, the researchers inferred that these ...

The Archaean eon was a time when Earth’s atmosphere and ocean were devoid of gaseous oxygen, but also when the first organisms to generate energy from sunlight evolved.