The findings suggest that the appearance of the vertebrate head skeleton ‘did not depend on evolution of a new skeletal tissue, as is commonly thought, but on the spread of this tissue throughout 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 origin of all living vertebrates just got more mysterious. Since the 1970s, many evolutionary biologists have considered an eel-like, deep-sea-dwelling creature called the hagfish to be the ...

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 ...

An amphioxus in the Daniel Medeiros lab is seen with most of its body burrowed into sand and its mouth exposed, as it waits for food to drift by. Photo by David Jandzik. The findings suggest that the ...

Genetic material once dismissed as mere "junk" may in fact be responsible to the evolution of simple invertebrates into more complex organisms sporting backbones, according to a new study. Tiny ...

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology discusses the significance of paleontology, Earth history and science in this ...

In the Late Paleozoic (260 million years ago), long before dinosaurs dominated the Earth, ancient precursors to mammals took to the trees to feed on leaves and live high above predators that prowled ...

Losing your baby teeth is a strange experience. The teeth gradually loosen until they're replaced by thicker, more durable ...