A new study from Bar-Ilan University shows that one of sleep's core functions originated hundreds of millions of years ago in ...

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 ...

With copper-blue blood prized by modern medicine and a body plan older than dinosaurs, the horseshoe crab reveals how ancient ...

Once upon a time, there were a bunch of one-celled microbes, swimming, eating, reproducing, doing all the things that a one-cell bit of life can do. Then, some time later, there were their descendants ...

In most cases, evolution is a pretty slow process, taking hundreds if not thousands of years—but when humans enter the ...

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

Bite force, a measure of the strength of an animal's bite, helps researchers understand a species' role in the ecosystem.

Sponges are among Earth's most ancient animals, but exactly when they evolved has long puzzled scientists. Genetic information from living sponges, as well as chemical signals from ancient rocks, ...

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 ...

A variety of studies are showing that rough-and-tumble play is important for animals and kids alike.

In five cases where vertebrates evolved monogamy, the same changes in gene expression occurred each time. In many non-monogamous species, females provide all or most of the offspring care. In ...

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 ...