Picture a dolphin diving toward the seafloor with something odd on its nose. It is not a shell or a fish. It is a sea sponge.

A completely new order of marine sponges has been found by researchers at the Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. The sponge order, named Vilesida, produces substances that could be used in drug ...

A team of MIT geochemists has unearthed new evidence in very old rocks suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. In a study appearing today in ...

Discovered 3,600 meters below the Southern Ocean, this carnivorous sponge traps live prey in a first-of-its-kind survival ...

Which animals came first? For more than a century, most evidence suggested that sponges, immobile filter-feeders that lack muscles, neurons and other specialized tissues, were the first animal ...

Were sponges or comb jellies the first to split from the animal family tree? A new approach at settling this question, which is critical to understanding the evolution of animals, points strongly to ...

SAN DIEGO, March 20, 2022 — Soft and immobile, sea sponges may appear inert, but these simple animals are rich with chemistry. From them, scientists have uncovered plenty of biologically active ...