It’s impossible to ignore a new discovery known affectionately as the death ball. And there’s a good reason to pay attention to this creature: it represents a group of organisms that scientists are ...

Picture a dolphin diving toward the seafloor with something odd on its nose. It is not a shell or a fish. It is a sea sponge.

Biological systems are renowned for their ability to create strong yet resilient structures. A sea sponge, for instance, grows in layers, forming unique patterns that integrate minerals with softer ...

If temperature-tracking sea sponges are to be trusted, climate change has progressed much further than scientists have estimated. A new study that uses ocean organisms called sclerosponges to measure ...

One dolphin swam past, her nose oddly enlarged. On a closer look, the bulb was a marine sponge — wedged tightly onto her beak like a soft, fleshy glove. She was not playing. She was hunting. Off the ...

SpongeBob SquarePants and his starfish best friend, Patrick Star, aren’t such cartoonish creatures after all. According to an image taken by a marine biologist doing remote deep-sea exploration this ...

A team of scientists digging up some of the Earth’s oldest rocks has uncovered new chemical evidence that Earth’s first animals were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge. The discovery relies on ...