The water-to-land transition stands as one of the most significant events in vertebrate evolution, giving rise to the two ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. After an ancient extinction killed about 85% of marine species, survivors in isolated refuges helped jawed vertebrates diversify ...

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 ...

A stunningly preserved, soft-bodied fish that is more than 500 million years old could be the ancestor of almost all living vertebrates. The fossilized fish, called Metaspriggina, sports ...

A major fossil discovery in Canada sheds new light on the development of the earliest vertebrates, including the origin of jaws, the first time this feature has been seen so early in the fossil record ...

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 ...

The water-to-land transition is a leap in the history of vertebrate evolution and one of the most important scientific issues in vertebrate evolution. Previous studies have shown that vertebrate ...

AMES, Iowa – Scientists searching the most ancient corners of the genome of a reptile native to New Zealand found patterns that help explain how the genomes of all vertebrates took shape, according to ...

It's easy to take our eyes for granted. But our recent research shows they took an incredible evolutionary journey to reach ...

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, ...

Famed British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough has been lending his calming voice to nature documentaries ever since TV was in black and white. And the 89-year-old is still at it. His ...

Over 500 land-based vertebrates — animals with spines — are on the brink of extinction. “We are no longer looking at the loss of obscure species that most people aren’t interested in,” Tierra Curry, a ...