Over the past few years, studies of genomes have confused what we thought we knew about the origin of animal life. Instead of the simple sponges being the earliest branch off the animal tree, a group ...

Who came first – sponges or comb jellies? A new study reaffirms that sponges are the oldest animal phylum – and restores the classical view of early animal evolution, which recent molecular analyses ...

In 1986, a group of scientists from Australia and New Zealand described, in the one of the highest profile scientific journals, the existence of a new class of organisms. During examination of ...

Most of the life on Earth comes in the form of small, single-celled organisms. But even though we knew there was incredible diversity at the microbial level, these cells all look pretty similar under ...

Scientists have discovered a new phylum of microbes in Earth's Critical Zone, an area of deep soil that restores water quality. Ground water, which becomes drinking water, passes through where these ...