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

A new study theorizes that evolution ticks at different speeds, especially when a big group of organisms first appears.

The oldest fossilized remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that ...

It's considered one of the most decisive steps in human evolution. Now, scientists believe they have pinpointed when our ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from ...

The origins of consciousness date back about 540 million years ago, when animal bodies became more complex. Feelings like ...

Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the distinction between hominids and hominins and traces the evolutionary ...

One of the most important steps in the evolution of modern mammals was the development of highly sensitive hearing. The middle ear of mammals, with an eardrum and several small bones, allows us to ...

In most narratives, the story of evolution is the story of organisms emerging from the ocean and eventually populating the land. But for some species that evolution also involved a return trip. Dozens ...

This documentary walks through the entire prehistoric timeline of North America, showcasing ancient seas, early reptiles, massive dinosaurs, and the ice age giants that followed. Each era brings new ...

With dexterous childlike hands and cheeky “masks,” raccoons are North America’s ubiquitous backyard bandits. The critters are so comfortable in human environments, in fact, that a new study finds that ...

Max Telford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...