The discovery of fat molecules in a fossil 558 million years old confirms it as the oldest-known animal on record, a group of researchers announced on Friday. The fossil is of a “strange creature ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Over 500 million years ago, the ancestors of a diverse group of animals known as Ecdysozoans existed. This group includes various ...

Early animals formed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting the evolutionary stage for the Cambrian explosion, according to a study by Rebecca Eden, Emily Mitchell, ...

Some of the earliest animals on Earth were soft-bodied ocean-dwellers that ranged from a few inches to several feet and were shaped like circular discs, tubes, or cushion-like bags. While fossil ...

Geobiologists investigate the first mass extinction. Geobiologists from the United States have shed new light on the first known mass extinction event on Earth, which occurred 550 million years ago ...

More than 540 million years ago, primitive organisms that looked like frilled tulip blooms shared communal meals at underwater "dinner parties," according to fossils found in Namibia. Clusters of ...

The earliest multicellular organisms may have lacked heads, legs, or arms, but pieces of them remain inside of us today, new research shows. Fossil of Dickinsonia, an Ediacaran-era animal. Credit: ...