For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are ...

For decades, scientists have puzzled over a significant gap in the fossil record of Earth's earliest animals, with genetic ...

Studies looking at how sponges have evolved on a molecular level have suggested that spicules should be present over 700 ...

Scientists refine the timeline of sponge origins, showing soft-bodied ancestors likely evolved later than some chemical evidence suggested.

A Canadian geologist may have found the earliest fossil record of animal life on Earth, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Around a billion years ago, a region of ...

A team of scientists digging up some of the Earth’s oldest rocks has uncovered new chemical evidence that Earth’s first animals were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. The discovery relies on ...

Simple animal life may have existed in Earth’s oceans 890 million years ago, according to new research. Recently discovered fossils belonging to ancient sponges might be the earliest known remnants of ...

Field locations in the Northwest Territories of Canada where fossils that may represent the earliest known animal life sponges that lived roughly 890 million years ago were found in mountainous ...

Wild dolphins use sea sponges as tools to hunt safely, revealing how animal culture survives despite hidden sensory costs.

Recently found primitive sponge fossils from South Australia suggest that animals have been on Earth for at least 650 million years. This discovery pushes back the fossil record for animals by about ...

The theory of evolution shows that all of life stems from a single root and that we are related, more or less distantly, to every other living thing on Earth. Our closest ancestors, as Charles Darwin ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Canadian geologist may have found the earliest fossil record of animal life on Earth, according to a report published Wednesday, July 28 in the journal 'Nature.' Around a billion ...