Hosted on MSN
A 550-million-year-old sponge fossil may have lacked a skeleton entirely — rewriting how the first animals evolved
When paleontologists picture the earliest animals, they tend to imagine something with at least a rudimentary skeleton: a lattice of glassy needles, perhaps, or a mesh of calcium carbonate. But a ...
Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and skeleton-free, explaining why their fossils don’t appear until much later. By ...
Some results have been hidden because they may be inaccessible to you
Show inaccessible results