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 ...

It’s impossible to ignore a new discovery known affectionately as the death ball. And there’s a good reason to pay attention ...

The origin of animals may have happened 350 million years earlier than thought. Fossils that seem to be sponges, one of the first animals to evolve, have been found in rocks from 890 million years ago ...

Picture a dolphin diving toward the seafloor with something odd on its nose. It is not a shell or a fish. It is a sea sponge.

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 ...

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 ...

For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach. Which animals came first? For more ...

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 ...