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 ...

Biologists have long drawn the animal family tree with a hazy base, unsure which creature first split from the common ancestor that gave rise to everything from jellyfish to humans. Now, a new genomic ...

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE AND NOTES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- 1. Before Animals -- 2. Phylogenetics and the Base of the Animal Tree of Life -- 3. Ctenophora -- 4 ...

Professor Lars Schmitz joins WIRED to guide us through a giant tree of life mapping the evolution of eyes in the animal kingdom: how they work, why they've taken the form they have, and the ...

A huge and beautifully preserved suite of fossils discovered in China has cast doubt on the idea that complex life flourished dramatically during a rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian ...

“Terrible Lizards”—That’s the literal translation of the term Dinosauria, coined by Sir Richard Owen in the 19th century to describe the colossal bones early paleontologists were unearthing. For a ...

A monkey descending a tree trunk often keeps its head up, moving almost like a cautious climber backing down a ladder. Squirrels and many other mammals, by contrast, tend to go headfirst. That ...

Paleorex is back on Bored Panda with his detailed, science-based creatures, showing us how animals like big cats, birds, and reptiles might evolve in the future. In this article, we’re featuring even ...

Critical proteins involved in animal stem cell regulation are much older than previously thought, predating the origin of animals that likely evolved more than 700 million years ago. This is the ...

Scientists have ranked all known flowering plants and found that more than 20% of their evolutionary history is now at risk ...