Vertebrate morphology exhibits remarkable diversity, reflecting a complex interplay of developmental processes, genetic regulation and environmental pressures. This variation arises from a combination ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth nearly wiped out life in the oceans. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, ...

During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots ...

Researchers have traced cell origins critical to vertebrate evolution by studying a group of primitive, bloodsucking fish called lampreys. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

The conservation of genome regulatory elements over long periods of evolution is not limited to vertebrates, as previously ...

Bucknell University Professor Jeffrey Trop, geology & environmental geosciences, is one of the recipients of a National Science Foundation (NSF) $148,000 collaborative grant supporting research that ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...

The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a new study. The efficient ...

A new study has rewritten a key chapter in the story of vertebrate evolution. Researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and the Smithsonian Institution in the United States have ...

A living fossil fish just proved we've misunderstood a major chapter in the story of evolution. For decades, the coelacanth — an ancient fish species that first appeared 400 million years ago — was ...

Evolution occurs over millennia, but it can also happen in just a few generations. For example, Darwin's finches in the Galapagos rapidly evolved specialized beaks as their food options changed, green ...