Earliest animals developed later than assumed
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - 10:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Sponges belong to our earliest ancestors. However, fossils, molecules and genes disagree on the rise of these early animals. A large international team of researchers around Christian Hallmann and Benjamin Nettersheim from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry now found new molecular clues suggesting that sponges may have appeared much later than commonly assumed.