Biologists have considered nearly every major taxon of animals as the key starting point for the evolution of vertebrates. We survey these ideas, many of which are no longer tenable in the light of ...

Those of you who took high school biology may remember the lancelet, also known as the amphioxus. Its simplified body plan is notable for containing a number of features that it shares in common with ...

Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, ...

Vertebrates have extremely different brain sizes: even with the same body size, brain size can vary a hundredfold. As a rule, mammals and birds have the largest brains in relation to their body size, ...

A study by a group of researchers at the University of Kentucky in collaboration with scientists in four other countries has been published in Nature. Their study is titled "The hagfish genome and the ...

Researchers have elucidated the evolutionary origins of placodes and neural crests, which are defining features of vertebrates, through lineage tracing and genetic analysis in Ciona intestinalis, a ...

The coelacanth is known as a "living fossil" because its anatomy has changed little in the last 65 million years. Despite being one of the most studied fish in history, it continues to reveal new ...

From genetics alone, scientists can now predict how long any of myriad different creatures can live. The “lifespan clock” estimates vertebrate animals’ (those with a backbone) longevity — including ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...

Using the largest and most informative molecular phylogenetic dataset ever analysed, evolutionary biologists were able to construct a new phylogenetic tree of jawed vertebrates. This new tree resolves ...