M. Eleonora Rossi

📣 Call for Abstracts!
Working on sex chromosomes? Join us at SMBE 2026 in Copenhagen (28 June–2 July). All taxa, systems, and approaches welcome!
⏰ Deadline: 3 Feb 2026
👉 smbe2026.org/abstracts/

We’ve finally discovered when sponges appeared on Earth | Natural History Museum New research has revealed the hidden early history of the sponges.

Did you know sponges are among the oldest animals on Earth? They're over half a billion years old!

New research has helped to narrow down when they first evolved - and it could reveal more about the first ever animals!

Find out more about these marine marvels 👇
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history Sponges have a cryptic Ediacaran history because ancestral sponges were soft-bodied and had low fossilization potential.

Sponges are notoriously difficult to understand in evolutionary biology terms. I think this paper is a big step forward : www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes Nature Ecology & Evolution - Analysis of the 3D chromatin architecture and cis-regulatory elements in a sea urchin and a sea star reveals mechanisms of 3D chromatin organization in echinoderms...

Our work on the evolution of the regulatory genome of echinoderms is now out in @natecoevo.nature.com. Led by my former PhD Marta Magri, Danila Voronov & Saoirse Foley. Great collaboration of Arnone, Hinman & Maeso labs, started long time ago with our missed José Luis Gomez-Skarmeta: rdcu.be/eXX8l

In your defense, I joined yesterday 😂

Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history Sponges have a cryptic Ediacaran history because ancestral sponges were soft-bodied and had low fossilization potential.

Our latest: Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history, led by @meleonora-rossi.bsky.social with help from friends @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social including @anariesgo.bsky.social @evopalaeo.bsky.social Davide Pisani and many others

Early sponges lacked [mineralised] skeletons.
New paper led by M. Eleonora Rossi. Great to have contributed alongside colleagues from @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social , @nhm-london.bsky.social and @mncn-csic.bsky.social.
Read it here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...