To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual ...

If you trace the animal family tree back through the fossil record, the trail usually goes cold about 539 million years ago. Before this boundary—the start of the famous Cambrian explosion—multicelled ...

Which animals came first? For more than a century, most evidence suggested that sponges, immobile filter-feeders that lack muscles, neurons and other specialized tissues, were the first animal ...

Life depends on genes being switched on and off at exactly the right time. Even the simplest living organisms do this, but usually over short distances across the DNA sequence, with the on/off switch ...

For over a century, scientists have wrestled with one of biology’s most fundamental mysteries: how the first animals evolved. These earliest creatures emerged more than 600 million years ago in ...

NEW YORK — Sponges are getting squeezed out of a distinctive role in evolution. A new study says they don’t represent the oldest branch of the animal family tree after all. The DNA research gives the ...

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 ...