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 newly identified sponge order, Vilesida, produces sterols linked to the oldest-known animal biomarkers, supporting the idea ...

A completely new order of marine sponges has been found by researchers at the Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. The sponge order, named Vilesida, produces substances that could be used in drug ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...