If you trace the animal family tree back through the fossil record, the trail usually goes cold about 539 million years ago.

A sweeping genetic study of over 150 species reveals that life’s move from water to land was not a single story, but a series ...

A remarkable fossil discovery in southwest China is rewriting the story of how complex animal life began, showing that many key animal groups appeared millions of years earlier than scientists once ...

Scientists have discovered which animal was the first to branch off from our collective common ancestor. For years, debate had raged over whether the first to diverge was the sea sponge or the comb ...

Newfound fossils from China suggest that complex animals were around millions of years earlier than thought, among them ...

Learn how newly discovered Ediacaran fossils are pushing the origins of animals back millions of years before the Cambrian explosion.

Animals have always shared our planet, our homes, and sometimes even our emotions. While humans often see themselves as more intelligent beings, animals possess qualities that remind us of what truly ...

Legend has it that physicist Ernest Rutherford once dismissed all sciences other than physics as mere “stamp collecting.” (Whether he actually said it is a matter of some debate.) But we now live in ...