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 ...

The Venus flower basket sponge, with its delicate glass-like lattice outer skeleton, has long intrigued researchers seeking to explain how this fragile-seeming creature’s body can withstand the harsh ...

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 ...

The researchers traced these special steranes to a class of sea sponges known as demosponges. Today, demosponges come in a huge variety of sizes and colors, and live throughout the oceans as soft and ...

The planet could see 2 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the decade. Earth may have already passed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and could be soon heading for 2 degrees of warming, researchers ...

Learn about how chemical fossils helped researchers identify one of Earth’s earliest animals: a sea sponge from the Ediacaran Period. Stephanie Edwards is the marketing coordinator at Discover ...

Photograper Julio A. Díaz. The new discoveries will increase the ecological importance of the Mallorca channel seamounts and the littoral caves, providing compelling arguments for the Spanish ...

The deep-sea Venus flower basket sponge can filter feed using only the faint ambient currents of the ocean depths, no pumping required, new research reveals. This discovery of natural 'zero energy' ...

At a certain point in Earth’s distant past, the planet’s assortment of organic molecules and compounds aligned to create the ...