Around half a billion years ago, in what is now the Yunnan Province of China, a tiny larva was trapped in mud. Hundreds of millions of years later, after the mud had long since become the black shales ...

Since the dawn of the biological sciences, humankind has struggled to comprehend the relationships among the major groups of "jointed-legged" animals -- the arthropods. Now, a team of researchers has ...

Newly discovered fossils fill a gap in scientists’ knowledge of how arthropods evolved their legs. The extinct creatures’ limblike flaps represent a stage before the two parts fused into the limbs ...

Rare fossils preserving the brains of creatures living more than half a billion years ago shed new light on the evolution of arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. Exquisitely preserved fossils ...

Editor's Note: This article was originally published at ScienceNordic. A new study has described the mouth apparatus of a half billion year old fossilised carnivore, the Pambdelurion, in fine detail ...

A team of scientists have discovered an ancient arthropod that may show the origins of branched limbs and the first gill-like breathing structures in the clade. When researchers working in ...

Some of the first creatures to leave the ocean and venture onto land may have done so by carrying a bit of the sea with them: Fossil trackways left on ancient tidal flats 500 million years ago hint ...