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 ...

Wild dolphins use sea sponges as tools to hunt safely, revealing how animal culture survives despite hidden sensory costs.

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Last year, orcas sashayed into the world of fashion with dead salmon hats. Now, dolphins are wowing us with flamboyant sea sponge fascinators. Images of the odd invertebrate-wearing behavior were ...

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a ...

SpongeBob SquarePants and his starfish best friend, Patrick Star, aren’t such cartoonish creatures after all. According to an image taken by a marine biologist doing remote deep-sea exploration this ...

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 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' ...

Australian sea lions wearing video cameras showed scientists a whole new world on the ocean floor. The footage revealed surprisingly diverse habitats like sponge gardens, coral reefs, and kelp reefs.

Biological systems are renowned for their ability to create strong yet resilient structures. A sea sponge, for instance, grows in layers, forming unique patterns that integrate minerals with softer ...

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals. Photo by ...

(Nanowerk News) 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 ...