THE study of form has revealed the importance of convergence in the evolution of plants and animals, as well as the inevitable influence of laws of growth which apply to creatures whatsoever their ...

A research team led by UC Berkeley scientists has defined a new branch on the tree of life after sequencing about 800 largely unknown bacteria genomes. The researchers classified these very small ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional ...

Biologists are quietly rewriting what it means to be alive, and the human body has become one of their strangest frontiers.

Humans make stuff up—including the names and classifications of living things. But those categories are still useful. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how taxonomy and systematics ...

Fish, flies and bears, oh my! A new research breakthrough gives genetic proof of how differences in (very different) animals develop. An international team of biologists has identified the molecular ...

The history of life stretches back untold eons. Today, there is a staggering array of organisms on Earth, with more species being discovered every year. The complexity of life, from the smallest ...

Life is ubiquitous on Earth and appears in a diversity of forms. But what characteristics do organisms have? What makes them alive? This activity explores that question. In the first part of the ...

Using genetic discoveries based on modern bioluminescent organisms, scientists have estimated coral bioluminescence to have originated in the Cambrian period, about 540 million years ago. This finding ...