Finding out how flight evolved or animals moved onto land is all about a collision of palaeontology and genetics, argue two new books

A shrimp-like creature found 6 kilometres down in the Pacific Ocean’s deepest trench has been named Eurythenes plasticus after the microplastics found in its gut

A 99-million-year-old skull recently discovered in amber might actually belong to a lizard, rather than a tiny bird-like dinosaur as first thought

Plant-eating cave bears vanished when ice spread across Europe – maybe because their large sinuses prevented them chewing meat to adapt to the new conditions

Ethereal photos of life’s building blocks, Earth’s toughest creature and a close-up of a gem win Olympus Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award regional prizes

Move over Martians, Earth has already been invaded by little green aliens, but how did parakeets become one of the most successful invasive species ever?

The first living organisms had to make essential carbon-based chemicals, and they may have done it by harnessing the chemical power of metals like nickel

Most molecules exist in mirror-image forms, and yet life prefers one over the other. How this bias began and why it persisted is one of the most baffling questions in biology – but now we have an answer

An aerial view of crabeater seals in Antarctica, mating damselflies and a twilight rocket launch were among the most lauded entries to the inaugural Nature TTL Photographer of the Year award

Jane Goodall has tirelessly fought for a better world for humans and wildlife, and with covid-19 we must stay positive, she says 

A well-preserved fossilised tail from Spinosaurus suggests this massive dinosaur may have been able to propel itself and hunt for prey in the water

The Tully Monster is a famously odd 300-million-year-old fossil that looks like an alien, but a new analysis suggests it was a backboned animal like a hagfish or lamprey

Investors withdrew record amounts of money from bond and equity funds in March while money market funds showed record inflows, as the prospect of a massive economic downturn due to coronavirus...

(This Apr 9 story corrects spelling and title of Joyce Maroney, founder and executive director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos, in paragraphs 16 and 23.)

After closing their doors to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, many small businesses face an uncertain future following government-ordered lockdowns.

In what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, Republican lawmakers routinely talked up the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. In fact, we were in that galaxy just three...

The United States Oil Fund LP, the largest oil-focused exchange-traded product (ETP) in the country, is moving to spread out its investments in oil futures in response to extreme market turbulence,...

In a little over a year, when Americans file their 2020 tax returns, much of what is going on with coronavirus-linked stimulus payments will finally add up.

Investors in SkyBridge Capital asked for hundreds of millions of dollars back after the fund suffered a 23% loss in March when investments made by its debt-focused hedge fund managers soured, Anthony...

U.S. money market fund assets increased by $72.69 billion to $4.652 trillion in the week ended April 28, the Money Fund Report said on Wednesday.

U.S. jobless claims have exceeded 30 million since the coronavirus outbreak hit the country, wiping out a decade of job gains and sending many Americans scrambling to find work and cash in on...

U.S. money market fund assets increased by $37.80 billion to $4.690 trillion in the week ended May 5, the Money Fund Report said on Wednesday.

U.S.-based stock funds posted $10.8 billion in outflows in the week ended ON Wednesday, according to Lipper.

Global hedge funds posted their biggest monthly gain in more than a decade in April when stocks rocketed higher with the help of government rescue packages designed to fuel growth stalled by the...

The care home's residents are all over 65 years old and have hardly left their apartments for weeks. To cheer them up, the administration decided to organize various concerts.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday described a valet of his reportedly testing positive for the coronavirus as "one of those things" and said that he and Vice President Mike Pence have since been tested and they are both negative.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany on Friday said it appears that the FBI 'manufactured' a crime in the case of President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, after the Department of Justice moved to drop the case on Thursday.

The oldest rocks ever found are over four billion years old and we don’t know how they formed – but a massive asteroid bombardment may be responsible

Self-educated ice sage James Croll cracked the conundrum of why Earth periodically freezes over. He was feted in his time, so why did the world forget him?

The planet’s largest areas of undisturbed wilderness in Siberia and tropical rainforests are under threat from huge waves of development. Here’s what it looks like

The next generation of geothermal plants will unlock more of Earth's bountiful, underground energy and could allow the technology to finally fulfil its promise

If you want to save Earth, argues a new book, quit sitting around in the present hoping for the best and learn to think really long term, like a geologist

From Kenyan children picking through plastic waste to swathes of Germany laid waste for coal mining, a film shows why we are in a new, human-created epoch

A tsunami kept pinging back and forth for three days after being triggered by the 8 September 2017 Mexico earthquake, posing even more risk to human life

A fossil so well preserved that its skin is still flexible is revealing much more about the marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs that swam in the sea during the age of dinosaurs

If you read a book painting the very worst-case scenarios about what global warming means for human life you could easily panic. Here’s why you shouldn’t

Fossil traces hidden deep underground may solve the mystery of dark matter, the elusive substance that makes up 80 per cent of the universe

We often think waterfalls indicate ancient tectonic or glacial activity – but it turns out they can form all by themselves without these external influences

The controversial Gaia hypothesis sees Earth as a superorganism adapted to be perfect for life. A weird type of evolution may finally show how that actually happens

Some of the first dinosaurs may have lived and hunted on the largest delta plain ever discovered, which was 10 times the size of the Amazon river delta

The landscape of Banks Island in the far north of Canada is being reshaped by global warming-triggered land slumps, and the situation is set to get much worse

From the development of our remarkable brains to the geographic divides in the way we vote, our shape-shifting planet has guided the path of humanity

Through the jungle, airborne lasers have spotted ruins of long-lost ancient civilisations in Asia. Archaeologist Damian Evans reveals all.

An analysis of pollen suggests cannabis evolved on the Tibetan Plateau, not far from a cave that was frequented by our ancient Denisovan cousins

In his new book Upheaval, polymath Jared Diamond says nations need a special kind of therapy to solve big problems like climate change, Brexit and nuclear proliferation

We now know that past periods when Earth cooled and warmed were only regional. The finding rebuffs the myth that today's planet-wide warming is a natural blip

A mini ice age that lasted 125 years started in the 6th century. Now we may have identified the volcano that kicked it all off

A decade ago, Johan Rockström identified the limits to Earth's life support systems. From chemical pollution to climate change, we're veering into the danger zone - so why is he (cautiously) optimistic about the future?

Preserved microorganisms have been found encased in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks, confirming that single-celled life was thriving early in Earth’s history

An epic project has worked out how much carbon there is on Earth. The answer is 1.85 billion billion tonnes – and most of it is underground