Sponges may be ancient, but their timeline has been murky. New research suggests the earliest sponges were soft and skeleton-free, explaining why their fossils don’t appear until much later. By ...

The bearded vulture achieves peak survival by consuming a diet of up to 90% solid bone. It's surprising that calcified remains offer greater caloric density than fresh meat. The acidic dissolution ...

Some animals seem to bend the rules of biology, and even physics, with skeletons that push the limits of what bones can do. From creatures that squeeze through impossibly tight spaces to those that ...

When paleontologists picture the earliest animals, they tend to imagine something with at least a rudimentary skeleton: a lattice of glassy needles, perhaps, or a mesh of calcium carbonate. But a ...

For the first time, the remarkable features of Australia's unique wildlife—from platypus, bilby, kangaroo, koala and emu to mammals gone extinct—are available for all to see, via their bones and ...