Scientists revisiting mysterious 540-million-year-old microfossils from Brazil have overturned a major idea about early animal life. What were once thought to be trails left behind by tiny worm-like ...

A huge and beautifully preserved suite of fossils discovered in China has cast doubt on the idea that complex life flourished dramatically during a rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian ...

The new fossil is named after Russell Garwood, a Manchester University paleontologist who has spent his career understanding chelicerate evolution. The specimen was originally collected in 1962 during ...

The details of how animal life began are a bit murky. Most of the groups familiar today are present in the Cambrian, a period when they rapidly diversified, with familiar features evolving alongside ...

In 2000, researchers described an odd fossil found not far from Chicago. It had a round body, finlike structures on one end and a tangle of arms. The fossil was classified as an octopus and named ...