Two species of worms have retained remarkably similar patterns in the way they switch their genes on and off despite having split from a common ancestor 20 million years ago, a new study finds. The ...

From elaborate dances to stunning plumage displays to dramatic head-butting, male animals have an array of ways to distinguish themselves from competitors while wooing a potential mate. But it's not ...

An ancient, armored worm may be the key to unraveling the evolutionary history of a diverse collection of marine invertebrates. Discovered in China, a roughly 520-million-year-old fossil of the newly ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Is evolution a gradual process or a punctuated one, with rapid evolution taking hold in fits and starts? A new study suggests the latter, as ...

Ancient fossils have shed new light on a type of sea worm linking it to the time of an evolutionary explosion that gave rise to modern animal life. Researchers at Durham University, UK, and Northwest ...

Ashleigh Papp: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I'm Ashleigh Papp. You might say that Guillermo Ponz is a scientific monster hunter–even though he thinks that term, “monster” never ...

Studying two highly divergent phyla of worms that contain numerous parasites that cause human and livestock diseases, new research sheds light on how sexual reproduction and subsequent great diversity ...

Experiments that showed a surprising persistence of sexiness in worms reveal how much we are still learning about the rules governing heritability, epigenetics and natural selection. Playing the ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." "It may be doubted," Darwin wrote, "if there are any other animals which have played such an important ...