A pigment that makes feathers and hair orange helps prevent cellular damage by removing excess cysteine from cells.

A genomic atlas of Nematostella vectensis reveals how primitive animals created multiple cell types millions of years ago, ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. The story of two of ...

A new study posits that same-sex sexual behavior developed to help primates in complex social groups ease tension, reduce ...

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 ...

Earth’s first sponges may have been ghostly, soft-bodied pioneers—ancient animals that evolved long before their skeletons ...

Once upon a time, there were a bunch of one-celled microbes, swimming, eating, reproducing, doing all the things that a one-cell bit of life can do. Then, some time later, there were their descendants ...

The origins of consciousness date back about 540 million years ago, when animal bodies became more complex. Feelings like pleasure and pain act as a "common currency" for decision-making, as we see in ...

(CNN) — The story of two of the strangest animals on the planet just got a little stranger, thanks to clues revealed by a lone fossil specimen that scientists now say represents a long-extinct ...

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 ...