Aug. 21 (UPI) --New fossil analysis suggests the planet's earliest known animals emerged at least 571 million years ago. The new study -- published this month in the journal Paleontology-- proves ...

Researchers uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period -- 635 to 541 million years ago -- diversified ...

One of the earliest known fossil animals, Dickinsonia lived on the sea floor over a half billion years ago. Based on traces of a biochemical marker, coprostanol, UC Davis paleobiologists propose that ...

Scientists believe that the Earth is currently in the midst of its sixth major extinction event, but a new study suggests that’s not the case – it may actually be the seventh. Scientists have found ...

Early animals formed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting the evolutionary stage for the Cambrian explosion, according to a study by Rebecca Eden, Emily Mitchell, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. May 31, 2024, 02:44pm EDT Jun 01, 2024, 06:02am EDT Illustration ...

Why did some of Earth's earliest complex organisms start to grow larger? A study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution may provide an answer to this question, suggesting that organisms ...

Scientists from China and the US have found what they say are the earliest animal footprints ever discovered. The tracks and burrows, dating back half a billion years to the Ediacaran Period, were ...

Even without body parts that allowed for movement, new research shows -- for the first time -- that some of Earth's earliest animals managed to be picky about where they lived. Even without body parts ...

Researchers led by Prof. ZHU Maoyan from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and their collaborators from the UK, the USA, and Russia have ...

Hundreds of millions of years ago, before animals began to emerge en masse during the Cambrian period, the Earth’s seas were filled with mysterious, soft-bodied organisms known as “Ediacara biota.” ...

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill received funding from the John Templeton Foundation and the UK Palaeontological Association. When did animals originate? Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin may have speculated ...