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 ...

At present there are many animal phyla that contain only a few species. The existence of these small phyla can be used to test assumptions about speciation and extinction in multicellular animals. We ...

Which group of animals evolved first? This problem has become a bone of contention among biologists. An international research team is now confident that the definitive answer is at hand: Sponges ...

Parasitism evolved at least 223 times, far more than the previous estimate of 60. It arose more times in certain phyla (e.g., arthropods, nematodes, flatworms, and mollusks) than in others. Today, ...

Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 25 (1994), pp. 351-375 (25 pages) Most animal phyla appeared in the Cambrian radiation, and many have a rich fossil record. The phylogenetic ...

The initial phases of animal evolution proceeded faster than hitherto supposed: New analyses suggest that the first animal phyla emerged in rapid succession -- prior to the global Ice Age that set in ...

DNA sequence data from neglected animal groups support a controversial hypothesis of deep evolutionary history. Inferring that history using only whole-genome sequences can evidently be misleading.

You’ve heard of a sea cucumber, but how about a sea mushroom? This week, scientists described a mushroom-shaped sea creature that may be in a phylum all its own. Two species of the newly described ...

Genetic analysis of an obscure, worm-like creature retrieved from the depths of the North Atlantic has led to the discovery of a new phylum, a rare event in an era when most organisms have already ...

Jordi Paps receives funding from the University of Essex, the Royal Society, and the Wellcome Trust. Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a ...