"Our work is a new piece of evidence that suggests that Mars was once a much more complex and active planet than it is now." ...

It means that life arose surprisingly quickly after the Earth was formed. It then persisted through a period 3.7 billion years ago, when the young Earth was regularly pelted by asteroids.

Earth's continents have been leaking nutrients into the ocean for at least 3.7 billion years, new research suggests.

Assuming they are real, they add weight to the evidence of isotopic lightness and show that, as early as 3.7 billion years ago, Earth was indeed home to complex microbial ecosystems.

Earth’s surface 3.7 billion years ago was a tumultuous place, bombarded by asteroids and still in its formative stages.

For decades, scientists believed that life on Earth took at least a billion years to get started. The prevailing idea was that the planet’s violent early history—especially a period of intense ...

Newly discovered fossil records hint that mold-like unicellular organisms — the common ancestor to all complex life on our planet — arrived over a billion years earlier than previous estimates.

The 50-mile-long (80 kilometers) ridge contains crystallized minerals called zircons dating to 4.4 billion years ago, making them the oldest Earth materials ever found.

Scientists have found what they claim are the oldest-known fossils on Earth, embedded in Canadian rocks that are at least 3.7 billion years old.

About 3.7 billion years ago, the rocks reached a temperature of 550°C. At such a high temperature, iron then had an opportunity to align itself with Earth’s magnetic field.

The formation of Earth culminated in its collision with a Mars-sized impactor planet, which also resulted in the formation of Earth’s moon some 4.5 billion years ago.