WASHINGTON (AP) — A Canadian geologist may have found the earliest fossil record of animal life on Earth, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Around a billion years ago, a ...

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 ...

Recently found primitive sponge fossils from South Australia suggest that animals have been on Earth for at least 650 million years. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ...

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 ...

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 ...

Surprisingly, genome comparisons have failed to resolve a major question in animal evolution: Which living animals are the descendants of the earliest animals to evolve in the world's oceans?

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 ...

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 ...