The last common ancestor of all living things did not just suddenly appear on Earth roughly 4.2 billion years ago. Some of its genes came from an even older and more mysterious source… "While the last ...

Every organism alive on Earth, from oak trees to octopuses to the bacteria in our gut, belongs to a single extended family. Genetic evidence points back to one ancestral cell, a last common forebear ...

Ancient duplicated genes are giving scientists their first real clues about what life was like before all life on Earth ...