Tools used for digging up underground plant foods, supporting the idea of a plant-based diet among early humans.

Ancient wooden tools found at a site in Gantangqing in southwestern China are approximately 300,000 years old, new dating has ...

Earth's history is marked by devastating mass extinctions, each one reshaping life as we know it. Now, experts warn that humanity may be triggering the next catastrophic event. The rate of species ...

For most of the Ordovician, plants thrived in Antarctica. That changed when the temperature dropped by 8°C and ice crept over the poles. Winters got colder and summers hotter.

To study the rapidly changing ecosystems of Antarctica, researchers have recently created the first continent-wide map of its plant life. You might expect the color palette of Antarctica to be ...

The series of extinctions that occurred during the Ordovician and Silurian periods between 445 and 415 million years ago wiped out as much as 85 percent of all animal species on Earth. It was the ...

Though not as advanced as what we have now, Ordovician life was more developed than that of the Cambrian period. The Ordovician organisms included articulate brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, gastropods ...

A newly developed "plant tree of life" may help scientists crack an "abominable mystery" declared by Charles Darwin. Flowering plants first evolved over 140 million years ago.

After the first flower bloomed on the Earth, flowering plants evolved a staggering diversity and now make up about 90% of all plant life. Charles Darwin called this rapid domination an ...