Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

A team of MIT geochemists has unearthed new evidence in very old rocks suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. Subscribe to our newsletter ...

When thinking about the ancient animals of Earth, you likely picture fish, birds, and dinosaurs. But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. New research finds chemical fossils from sponges in rocks over 541 million years old, suggesting animals emerged earlier than once ...

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals. Photo by ...

Scientists at MIT have found compelling chemical evidence that Earth’s earliest animals were likely ancient sea sponges. Hidden inside rocks over 541 million years old are rare molecular “fingerprints ...

Molecular clocks, which use the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce how long ago two species diverged, and phylogenetics (the evolutionary relationships between species) can tell us when sea ...

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 ...

A team of MIT geochemists has unearthed new evidence in very old rocks suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. In a study appearing today in ...