For decades, one puzzle stood out among the many mysteries of early animal evolution: the missing origin story of bryozoans.

How ancient bryozoans may have looked. (Zhifei Zhang) The Cambrian explosion was one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of evolution. Around 540 million years ago, a sudden, astonishing ...

A newly discovered trove of fossils in southwestern China is shifting the timeline of when complex animals evolved. The diversity and complexity of animal life is thought to have increased rapidly ...

Animal life is extraordinarily diverse and complex, having colonised almost all environments on Earth – from hostile hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to the skies across our continents. But all this ...

For decades, scientists have wondered what triggered the sudden "explosion" of complex animal life on Earth. This new hypothesis suggests that the answer isn't found in shells or legs, but in the ...

Exceptionally preserved fossils from China reveal that bryozoans were already thriving during the Cambrian explosion.