Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Ediacaran period challenge what scientists thought was possible in sandstone. In the fossil record, creatures without hard shells or skeletons, such as ...

Pannotia holds an odd place in Earth science. It is mentioned in textbooks and review papers, but its outline is unclear. The ...

The missing link in the mystery turned out to be an event called the Cambrian explosion. It was only after it that living ...

Geologists have discovered the first ancestor on the family tree that contains most animals today, including humans. The wormlike creature, Ikaria wariootia, is the earliest bilaterian, or organism ...

Earth’s first sponges may have been ghostly, soft-bodied pioneers—ancient animals that evolved long before their skeletons ...

For decades, scientists have puzzled over a significant gap in the fossil record of Earth's earliest animals, with genetic ...

Before Pangea ever existed, Earth already pulled off a massive experiment called Nuna, and it quietly changed life forever.

Scientists refine the timeline of sponge origins, showing soft-bodied ancestors likely evolved later than some chemical evidence suggested.

Early regional sauropodomorph fossils from 200.17 Ma suggest post-Triassic mass extinction dinosaur colonization in low paleolatitudes, likely due to Central Atlantic Magmatic Province stressors and ...