Interpreting truly ancient fossils is an especially tricky business. The conclusion that 2.1-billion-year-old structures from Gabon are the remains of large colonial organisms will get ...

Foreword : the evolution of multicellularity / John Tyler Bonner -- I. Functional and molecular predispositions to multicellularity. Fossils, feeding, and the evolution of complex multicellularity / ...

The evolution of multicellularity enabled specialization of cells, but required novel signalling mechanisms for regulating cell differentiation. Early multicellular organisms are mostly extinct and ...

Researchers in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University have uncovered something new in one of the most studied organisms on Earth, and their ...

Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

If you know anything about deep history, you’ve doubtless heard something about the Cambrian Explosion, 542 million years ago (MYA), when all those trilobites showed up with their animal body plans.

One of the most pivotal steps in evolution -- the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms -- may not have required as much retooling as commonly believed, scientists have found. A ...

One of the big evolutionary questions in life is how and why single cell organisms organized themselves to live in a group, thereby forming multicellular life forms. Scientists have answered at least ...

Mathematical model: The study shows that multicellularity can evolve without direct benefits over unicellular ancestors. In spatially heterogeneous environments, indirect ecological effects may ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the genes that allow an organism to switch between living as single cells and forming multicellular structures. This ability to alternate ...

LA JOLLA, CA-One of the most pivotal steps in evolution-the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms-may not have required as much retooling as commonly believed, found a globe-spanning ...