The evolution of multicellular life has played a pivotal role in shaping biological diversity. However, we have up until now known surprisingly little about the natural environmental conditions that ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, November 13, 2023 — An international research team led by James Umen, PhD, member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center has made an unexpected discovery of a biased counting mechanism ...

A newly discovered fossil species of green algae indicates that photosynthesis originated in plants at least 1 billion years ago, paleobiologists reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution yesterday ...

Researchers have discovered the first in-situ evidence of chlorophyll remnants in a billion-year-old multicellular algal microfossil preserved in shales from the Congo Basin. This discovery has made ...

Scientists may be one step closer to determining when exactly photosynthesizing plants (Viridiplantae) first evolved, with the discovery of a new species of ancient algae they have named Proterocladus ...

Algal cells that cheat are more vulnerable to stress. This trade-off could help explain the emergence of multicellular organisms, and what keeps cells in algae and cells in our bodies cooperating with ...

What is the last common ancestor of all plants and animals? Where did complex life come from and when? Scientists have been trying to answer these questions for many years. A new finding has changed ...

Researchers have captured the first clear view of the hidden architecture that helps shape a simple multicellular organism, showing how cells work together to build complex life forms. Volvox. The ...

The following is an extract from our nature newsletter Wild Wild Life. Sign up to receive it for free in your inbox every month. New Scientist recently reported on something I’d never heard of before: ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Once upon a time, long ago, the world was encased in ice. That’s the tale told by sedimentary rock in the tropics, many geologists ...

University of Bristol provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. People often underestimate tiny beings. But microscopic algal cells not only evolved to thrive in one of the most ...