Fern-like bodies once covered the seafloor, some stretching as tall as a person. Yet for millions of years, the animal world ...

The way that Earth's first animals reproduced held back life's diversity for millions of years, until stress and competition ...

Earth’s earliest animals may have held evolution back because they reproduced asexually, creating low-competition communities ...

Long considered possible evidence of some of the earliest animal activity ever recorded, these tiny fossils discovered in ...

In the Ediacaran period of Earth’s history, life was pretty quiet. Animals did exist, but they didn’t move very much, didn’t ...

Macroscopic organisms from the late Ediacaran period have often been described as failed experiments in the history of life. We argue that the field of Ediacaran palaeobiology should dispense with ...

Tracks left by some of the earliest complex animals are giving new insights into how they experienced the world. New research reveals how these creatures started to understand their surroundings, ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK have found that the first animals on Earth could inadvertently slow ...

Rocks of Ediacaran age (~635–541 Ma) contain the oldest fossils of large, complex organisms and their behaviors. These fossils document developmental and ecological innovations, and suggest that ...

A geological row is brewing over the first new geological period in 120 years to receive an official name. This month the International Union of Geological Sciences announced that its International ...

Evolutionary debate Ancient fossils found in South Australia lived on land, argues one researcher, whose controversial claim has huge implications for the tree of life. Professor Gregory Retallack of ...