Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap. In ...

To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal’s body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A ...

Cell division is fundamental to life, enabling growth, reproduction, and survival across all organisms, from single-celled bacteria to complex multicellular animals. While animals and fungi share a ...

Evolution isn’t a single, straightforward process – it works in several distinct ways. From species splitting apart over time ...

Surprising findings on the development of sea anemones suggest that a predatory lifestyle molded their evolution and had a significant impact on the origin of their nervous system. The researchers ...

With terrifyingly sharp teeth arranged around a circular mouth, lampreys look about as primitive a vertebrate as you could imagine. But a new study finds that the animals have a surprising similarity ...

A millimeter-sized sea animal could hold clues to the evolution of the human nervous system. While placozoans are simple animals only as big as a grain of sand, the blobs have unique cells that could ...

A new study, led by the University of Vienna and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, shows how the eyes of adult marine bristleworms continue to grow throughout life—driven by a ring of ...