New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine - including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians - evolved. In a paper ...

Ancient fossils from South China reveal the earliest bony fishes and shed new light on how jaws, teeth, and key vertebrate ...

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 ...

Several "brainy" genes that were duplicated in a tiny sea creature nearly 550 million years ago may have led to the massive expansion in intelligence in vertebrate species, two new studies have found.

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

Tuna, salmon, mackerel. I’ve never looked at my afternoon sushi and wondered if it’s related to humans. So, I asked one of those friends named Thomas Siek. He’s a biological anthropologist at ...

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 ...

Although less familiar as flower visitors than insect pollinators, vertebrate pollinators are more likely to have coevolved tight relationships of high value to the plants they service, supplying ...