The vertebrate body plan emerged in concert with extensive changes to anterior chordate morphology, including assembly of a craniofacial skeleton, expansion of the anterior neuroepithelium into a ...

The cradle of vertebrate evolution was limited to a zone of shallow coastal waters, no more than 60 meters deep. In those waters, fish — the first vertebrates — appeared roughly 480 million years ago, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

There may be twice as many vertebrates on the planet as previous estimates claimed, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. That's ...

Scientists once thought that humans must have two million genes to account for all our complexity. But since sequencing the human genome, we've learned humans only have about 19,000 to 25,000 genes - ...

Vertebrates produce diverse proteins from single genes, unlike invertebrates. This protein diversity helps vertebrates develop complex organs and cell types. University of St Andrews research offers ...

A new assessment conducted by 174 scientists from around the world underscores a growing concern about the health of the world's biodiversity, quantifying the rate of decline among vertebrate species ...

Most people don’t think of turtles as being exceptionally chatty—or even making sounds at all. But research published today in Nature Communicationsreveals that at least 50 turtle species vocalize—and ...