Sponges are among Earth's most ancient animals, but exactly when they evolved has long puzzled scientists. Genetic ...

A new study from Bar-Ilan University shows that one of sleep's core functions originated hundreds of millions of years ago in ...

With copper-blue blood prized by modern medicine and a body plan older than dinosaurs, the horseshoe crab reveals how ancient ...

In most cases, evolution is a pretty slow process, taking hundreds if not thousands of years—but when humans enter the ...

An artist’s impression depicts Kryoryctes at Dinosaur Cove in Australia. New research supports the hypothesis that Kryoryctes is a common ancestor of both the platypus and echidna. - Peter Schouten ...

Once upon a time, there were a bunch of one-celled microbes, swimming, eating, reproducing, doing all the things that a one-cell bit of life can do. Then, some time later, there were their descendants ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A ...

Bite force, a measure of the strength of an animal's bite, helps researchers understand a species' role in the ecosystem.

The oldest fossilised remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that ...

A variety of studies are showing that rough-and-tumble play is important for animals and kids alike.

In five cases where vertebrates evolved monogamy, the same changes in gene expression occurred each time. In many non-monogamous species, females provide all or most of the offspring care. In ...

To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual ...