New research shows that the earliest sponges were soft bodied and lacked skeletons, explaining why their oldest fossils are ...

A completely new order of marine sponges has been found by researchers at the Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. The sponge order, named Vilesida, produces substances that could be used in drug ...

The next time you go wild swimming, whether in a lake, river or sea, you are probably sharing the water with one of your tiniest, yet closest relatives. Choanoflagellates, like most single celled ...

The study outlines a new scenario for understanding how genome regulation and chromatin organization influence the evolution of animal body plans. The conservation of genome regulatory elements over ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A ...

The evolutionary origin of sperm can be traced back to a single-celled ancestor of all living animals. Almost all animals reproduce by having a single-celled stage of their life cycle, involving two ...

Max Telford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...