The most beloved cartoon sponge of a generation spent ... announcer and because I liked the versatility of the sponge as an animal,” Hillenburg said in a 2008 declaration, during a copyright ...

But if you went back 750 million years, to the first ancestor of all animals, you'd find the simple sponge at the bottom of our evolutionary tree. For years, scientists have debated what type of ...

Either way, he says, "The reality is a little crueler than perhaps a cartoon would suggest." In scientific terms, a sponge is Hertwigia ... "These are literally animals that the public might ...

Simple animal life may have existed in Earth’s oceans 890 million years ago, according to new research. Recently discovered fossils belonging to ancient sponges might be the earliest known ...

The first animal to appear on Earth was probably the humble sea sponge, American scientists believe. According to researchers at the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), sea ...

The second dish turned out to contain a sponge (phylum: Porifera), an animal that looks like the antithesis of an animal. Sponges sit immobile, anchored to rock or rooted in sediment, filtering ...

The divisive topic: What creature is last common ancestor of all animals? Researchers have split into two camps. Some say it was a simple sponge-like creature that first formed, while others ...

Sponges evolved later. For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago. Searching ...

The origin of animals may have happened 350 million years earlier than thought. Fossils that seem to be sponges, one of the first animals to evolve, have been found in rocks from 890 million years ...

sponge fossils from northwestern Canada could be 350 million years older, significantly pushing back the date of Earth’s earliest-known animals. The ancient discovery is igniting debate among ...

The new mushroom is shaped like a sea sponge and has a musty smell A new species of mushroom has been named by its discoverers after the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. The fungus ...

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 ...