A fascinating fossil discovery in remote South Australia sheds light on an important chapter in the history of life on Earth: the origins of Ecdysozoa, a vast superphylum that includes molting animals ...

AUSTIN, Texas—Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals, says biologist Mikhail "Misha" ...

Precambrian time covers the vast bulk of the Earth's history, starting with the planet's creation about 4.5 billion years ago and ending with the emergence of complex, multicelled life-forms almost ...

Most sea sponges are simple, yet ancient, animals that live in coral reef ecosystems. They feed by passively filtering ocean ...

Researchers discover penetrative trace fossils from the late Ediacaran of western Mongolia, revealing earlier onset of the “agronomic revolution”. Researchers led by Nagoya University discover ...

Cholesterol clinched it: A group of strange Precambrian fossils are among the oldest known animals in the rock record. The finding “gets rid of the more outlandish hypotheses about what these objects ...

The Cambrian is rightly famous for being the period when animal life first exploded into a dizzying diversity of forms, including some body plans that remain with us today. But the first animals in ...

The world's first birds, along with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, likely sported colorful, patterned exteriors. Paleontologists have long speculated that such animals were colorful, but ...