Three species that lived about 308 million years ago challenge the idea that the first land vertebrates underwent ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

Adaptive immunity is a powerful defense mechanism in vertebrates. A finely tuned interplay of different cell types provides a pathogen-specific immune response to eliminate for example bacteria and ...

Scales, spines, feathers and hair are examples of vertebrate skin appendages, which constitute a remarkably diverse group of micro-organs. Despite their natural multitude of forms, these appendages ...

The number of vertebrate species inhabiting the different regions of the world is highly variable, as is the proportion of threatened species. Some regions, such as the tropics, have more threatened ...