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 ...

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

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 ...

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.

Simple animal life may have existed in Earth’s oceans 890 million years ago, according to new research. Recently discovered fossils belonging to ancient sponges might be the earliest known remnants of ...

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 ...

Were sponges or comb jellies the first to split from the animal family tree? A new approach at settling this question, which is critical to understanding the evolution of animals, points strongly to ...

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - Fossils found in rugged mountainous terrain in Canada's Northwest Territories may give a glimpse at the humble dawn of animal life on Earth - sea sponges that inhabited ...