Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and skeleton-free, explaining why their fossils don’t appear until much later. By ...

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 ...

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 ...