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 ...

At first glance, this mammal looks like a horse gone terribly wrong. But, in reality, Chalicotherium is far from a botched ...

When pill bugs roll into a tiny ball, the act looks far simpler than it actually is. Known as conglobation, a pill bugs’ ...

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 ...

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 ...

The evolution of some of the earliest complex animals on our planet may have been spurred on by other, simpler early animals. These simple marine animals first evolved around 560 million years ago and ...

A genomic atlas of Nematostella vectensis reveals how primitive animals created multiple cell types millions of years ago, ...

A popular idea suggests a link between big brains and a rich social life, but octopuses don't fit the pattern, which suggests ...

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 ...

Evolution is often perceived as an incredibly slow, natural process driven by environmental pressures over millennia. That characterization certainly holds true, but humans have also repeatedly ...

Earth’s first sponges may have been ghostly, soft-bodied pioneers—ancient animals that evolved long before their skeletons ever appeared in stone.