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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...