Sponges are among Earth's most ancient animals, but exactly when they evolved has long puzzled scientists. Genetic ...

Scientists refine the timeline of sponge origins, showing soft-bodied ancestors likely evolved later than some chemical ...

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

Sponges are among earth’s most ancient animals, but exactly when they evolved has long puzzled scientists. Genetic ...

With their rigid structures and lack of appendages, sponges can seem more like plants or fungi than the animals that they are. Long assumed to be basically immobile, sponges have been spotted leaving ...

Many corals and sponges form skeletons that support and shape their bodies. Whereas biomineralization—the formation of these skeletons—has been intensively studied in corals, the main ecosystem ...

Prof. YUAN Xunlai from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his team have discovered a late Ediacaran crown-group sponge, Helicolocellus, from the ...

April 26 (UPI) --New research suggests ocean sponges aren't as sedentary as once thought. Recent surveys of the Arctic seabed revealed trails of light brown sponge spicules, needle-like support ...

That engineering can learn from sea sponges isn’t as strange as it first seems. The tiny, hair-like appendages, called basalia spicules, that fix the creature to the floor are composed of a form of ...

Relatives of the humble sea sponge have filtered Earth's waters for hundreds of millions of years or more, long before the first plants took to land. Their simplicity has led scientists to suggest ...