npj Complexity - Priority effects inhibit the repeated evolution of phototrophy

Understanding the role of humans as ‘ecosystem engineers’ requires a deep-time perspective rooted in evolutionary history and the fossil record. Howev…

Species and ecosystems are changing rapidly in response to human actions, but how does this compare with the deeper past? We review and compare the current extinction event to those over the last 66 ....

A direct proxy for past dissolved organic carbon signatures using co-precipitated organic carbon in iron ooids enables reconstruction of marine dissolved organic carbon signals dating back to the Pala...

The energy balance of a planet is set by the sunlight entering and the heat radiating back from it. Earth’s biosphere adds new complexity as energy flows through global marine and terrestrial ecosystems altering physical and chemical systems, including ...

Perotti et al. find that polysaccharides from algae promote multicellular development in the choanoflagellate S. rosetta. Because algal polysaccharides are abundant in the aquatic environments where S...

Overlooked rock samples from 640 million years ago record microbes hanging on beneath frozen oceans

MIT - Postdoctoral Associate - Cambridge MA 02139

Application deadline: 25 July 2025 at 23:59 hours local Danish time

How carbon dioxide made planet Earth, shaped human history, and now holds our future in the balance.  Every year, we are dangerously warping the climate by ...

In an iron-sulfide chemical garden experiment that mimics the kind of hydrothermal vents that might have occurred in the early Archaean, mackinawite and greigite are precipitated and abiotic H2 is pro...

Rangeomorphs are some of the oldest complex macroscopic fossil organisms. Here, the authors describe a population of rangeomorphs with two, spindle-shaped fronds from Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, mod...

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

Under microscopes, scientists found that giant single-cell organisms were able to vacuum up more food when they are stuck together.

The rise of marine algae stimulated microbial predation at the seafloor, rerouting carbon and energy to the earliest animals.

The average long-term impact of Darwinian evolution on Earth’s habitability remains extremely uncertain. Recent attempts to reconcile this uncertai...

Humans—and analogous life beyond Earth—may represent the probable outcome of biological and planetary coevolution.