If you imagine the earliest animals on Earth, you might picture something simple but sturdy. Maybe a sponge-like creature ...

Based on our understanding of how fossils are formed, the Ediacara Biota shouldn’t still be around for us to look at today.

Some of the world’s most mysterious fossils, soft-bodied creatures preserved in coarse sandstone, owe their survival to an ...

Scientists discovered exceptionally preserved Ediacaran fossils in sandstone, revealing how soft-bodied organisms survived ...

The Ediacara Biota are some of the strangest fossils ever found—soft-bodied organisms preserved in remarkable detail where ...

Some of the earliest large organisms left fossils that seem almost impossible for their setting, fragile bodies captured in coarse, energetic seafloor sediments. A new chemical “fingerprint” in the ...

For decades, sponges have sat at the center of a timeline dispute, because genes and fossils have told different stories. A new analysis places sponge origins between 600 and 615 million years ago.

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Fossilized bones and teeth dating to 773,000 years ago unearthed in a Moroccan cave are providing a deeper understanding of the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa, ...

These spicules also have an extremely good fossil record, dating back to around 543 million years ago in the late Ediacaran Period. Their absence from older rocks has led some scientists to question ...

The diversity of sponges and their spicules. Sponges were the first reef builders and maintain a fundamental role in modern marine ecosystems. Sponges are among earth’s most ancient animals, but ...

Jawbones and other remains, similar to specimens found in Europe, were dated to 773,000 years and help close a gap in Africa’s fossil record of human origins. By Franz Lidz Researchers on Wednesday ...

Researchers theorize that the last common ancestor of modern humans and two of our extinct human cousins—Neanderthals and Denisovans—existed about 765,000 to 550,000 years ago. Where these ancestors ...