Tracking the record of early life
Based on a combination of geochemical, morphological and sedimentological evidence, the early biosphere included a wide diversity of prokaryotes exhibiting modern metabolisms that thrived in various marine and possibly terrestrial habitats.

Are the green algae (phylum Viridiplantae)
This paper is an inquiry into the Precambrian fossils of some "acritarchs" and of a primitive clade of green algae, the Pyramimonadales.

Decastronema kotori gen. nov., comb. nov.: a mat-forming cyanobacterium on Cretaceous carbonate platforms
A formal transfer of the fossil to a new genus of fossil cyanobacteria thereby designated as Decastronema gen. nov. is proposed, honoring the contribution of Prof. Piero De Castro to paleontology

First Orchid Fossil Puts Showy Blooms At Some 80 Million Years Old
Biologists at Harvard University have identified the ancient fossilized remains of a pollen-bearing bee as the first hint of orchids in the fossil record

96-million-year-old Fossil Pollen Sheds Light On Early Pollinators
The collapse of honeybee colonies across North America is focusing attention on the honeybees’ vital role in the survival of agricultural crops

Biologists Surprised To Find Parochial Bacterial Viruses
Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made a surprising discovery

Some trilete spores from Lower Carboniferous strata of the Rio Blanco Basin, western Argentina
A new miospore genus Ductilispora is described to accommodate simple acamerate miospores, which have a distal ornament of folds like muri or thickenings.

Miospores and chlorococcalean algae from the Los Rastros Formation, Middle to Upper Triassic of central-western Argentina
Lacustrine strata of the Los Rastros Formation (Middle to Upper Triassic) at Río Gualo section (La Rioja province), yield a distinctive palynological assemblage of miospores and chlorococcalean algae.

Diconodinium lurense sp. nov., a late Maastrichtian to Danian dinoflagellate cyst from southwest Atlantic basins
Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic deposits from the Colorado and Austral basins, Argentina and the Punta del Este Basin, Uruguay contain diverse organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts

Beyond Jurassic Park -- Real Science With Ancient DNA
Bacteria extracted from the abdomen of these long-dead bees has, for the first time ever, been successfully brought back to life.

Fossil shows life came out of the sea
Geologists have discovered 1.43 billion-year-old fossils of deep-sea microbes, providing more evidence that life may have originated on the bottom of the ocean.

Oldest Animal Fossils May Have Been Bacteria
The oldest-known animal eggs and embryos, whose first pictures made the cover of Nature in 1998, were so small they looked like bugs -- which, it now appears, they may have been.

Phoenix Rising: Scientists Resuscitate A 5 Million-year-old Retrovirus
A team of scientists has reconstructed the DNA sequence of a 5-million-year-old retrovirus and shown that it is able to produce infectious particles.

Ancient Retrovirus Is Resurrected
Retroviruses have been around longer than humanity itself.

Locked In Glaciers, Ancient Ice May Return To Life As Glaciers Melt
The DNA of ancient microorganisms, long frozen in glaciers, may return to life as the glaciers melt

Ancient Organisms Discovered In Canadian Gold Mine
Scientists have suspected that the three known domains of life -- eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea -- branched off and went their separate ways around three billion years ago.