A rare chemical indicator suggests sponges may have arrived as the first animals on Earth. A sterol core is primarily composed of four fused carbon rings, along with carbon side chains and other ...

SpongeBob SquarePants and his starfish best friend, Patrick Star, aren’t such cartoonish creatures after all. According to an image taken by a marine biologist doing remote deep-sea exploration this ...

A team of scientists digging up some of the Earth’s oldest rocks has uncovered new chemical evidence that Earth’s first animals were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. The discovery relies on ...

It looks like SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star might have been spotted outside of Bikini Bottom. A marine biologist posted a picture of a yellow sea sponge sitting next to a pink starfish in the ...

For decades, scientists have debated which animals first appeared on Earth and set the stage for the evolution of complex life. A recent study by MIT geochemists offers compelling evidence that the ...

For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are ...

Studies looking at how sponges have evolved on a molecular level have suggested that spicules should be present over 700 ...

Wild dolphins use sea sponges as tools to hunt safely, revealing how animal culture survives despite hidden sensory costs.