Scientists at MIT have found compelling chemical evidence that Earth’s earliest animals were likely ancient sea sponges.

Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and skeleton-free, explaining why their fossils don’t appear until much later. By ...

Long before humans built labs, filed patents, or sketched blueprints, animals were already solving the same problems we struggle with today. Nature has spent millions of years refining ways to move ...

The Cambrian Explosion is a landmark moment in the history of life on Earth when many of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. New research, however, suggests that many of ...

Life began in the sea, and it took a long time to move onto land. Plants started creeping ashore about 475 million years ago. Roughly 100 million years later, the first backboned animals followed. For ...