In a world where evolutionary biology often gets boiled down to simplistic hierarchies of "primitive" and "advanced" species, a new book by University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) biologist ...

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor that lived roughly four billion years ago. This so-called “last universal common ancestor” represents the most ancient organism that researchers can study.

It started quietly; with single cells dividing in the dark. The tree, as of 2016. It still contains just a fraction of 1% of species estimated to be alive today. (Jill Banfield / UC Berkeley, Laura ...