Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Once upon a time, there were a bunch of one-celled microbes, swimming, eating, reproducing, doing all the things that a one-cell ...

Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and skeleton-free, explaining why their fossils don’t appear until much later. By ...

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 ...

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 ...

Humans don’t have a defined mating season like deer or wolves. Here’s how evolution blended biology, culture and social life into year-round intimacy.

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 ...

Evolution is a continuous, powerful force shaping the natural world around us. As environmental pressures intensify, future animal evolution is likely to produce fascinating and sometimes bizarre new ...

A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap. In ...

The raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than we previously believed, according to new research. The raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than ...

Embryonic germ layers are the fundamental organizing principle in animal development. They provide the structural basis from which tissues and organs arise. During early embryogenesis, cells divide to ...