Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist?

In this feature, explore the history of life on Earth as we know it today, from the earliest bacteria to the first modern humans. Flash is a plug-in that allows for increased interactivity.

Imagine a world where continents are fused into one massive landmass, and life as we know it is on the brink of ...

2024 — This model reveals how vastly different the atmosphere was on ancient Earth, and how life may have first ... Ancient DNA Brings to Life History of the Iconic Aurochs, Whose Tale Is ...

But is it really unprecedented? In a series of five programmes, Justin Rowlatt explores the geochemical history of life on Earth, and discovers how humans are just the latest species to suddenly ...

Tomorrow's World What is climate change? The first life forms to evolve on Earth were microbes which could survive in this primordial atmosphere but about 2.5 billion years ago, plants developed ...

This global deep freeze, known as Snowball Earth, endured for tens of millions of years. Yet, miraculously, early life not ...

The S2 meteorite, discovered in 2014, was four times the size of Mount Everest and unleashed a tsunami bigger than any in known human history.

Explore the relics of failed settlements, doomed expeditions, and ancient Inuit history on Devon Island, one of the Arctic’s most unforgiving landscapes.

If Earth's history were a calendar year, humans would not appear until the last few minutes before midnight on Dec. 31.

From weeping trees to teeth stronger than Kevlar, senior curator Dr Tom White sheds some light on a few of the fascinating, unnoticed ways the Moon shapes the course of life on Earth. 'The Moon has ...

and shows how large-scale extinctions have had profound and long-lasting effects on the Earth's biosphere. '… sometimes the simplest of truths need to be pointed out to you. Reading Extinctions in the ...