Humans are one of 60,000 species that share a 500 million year old common ancestor. This creature was the ancestor of almost every vertebrate species, but it had a sixth sense that most of its ...

Whole-genome duplications are rare evolutionary events in which all the chromosomes and genes of a species are doubled. This supplies new genetic material to the gene pool and can provide an ...

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 ...

Just seven millimeters long, flea toads are among the smallest vertebrates on Earth. Despite their diminutive size, their organs and functions hardly differ from animals a thousand times larger. While ...

An illustration of a four-eyed myllokunmingid, a jawless fish that lived more than 500 million years ago Xiangtong Lei and Sihang Zhang Many spine-bearing creatures, or vertebrates, have a curious bit ...

The fossilized skull of Coccocephalus wildi, an early ray-finned fish that swam in an estuary 319 million years ago. The fish is facing to the right, with the jaws visible in the lower right portion ...

The researchers from the HiLIFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki compared two central bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps): a normal one and a mutant with no body scales. They ...

A new study out of the University of Chicago, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Albany Museum challenges a long-held hypothesis that the blind, filter-feeding larvae of modern lampreys are a ...

Scientists may have been dramatically undercounting the number of vertebrate species on Earth. A large analysis of more than 300 studies suggests that for every recognized species of fish, bird, ...

A 319-million-year-old fossilised fish has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain, according to scientists. The preserved creature, pulled from a coal mine in England more ...