Ancient animal history is extremely difficult to reconstruct, for a number of reasons. Some of the earliest creatures in existence were soft-bodied and microscopic, leaving behind very little evidence ...

Afossil uncovered along the Yangtze River in China is forcing scientists to rethink not just the origins of sponges but also the way they search for the earliest traces of animal life. For decades, a ...

A rare fossil discovery is shedding light on the “missing years” of early sponge evolution. Scientists found a 550-million-year-old sponge that likely lacked hard skeletal parts, explaining why ...