Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Analysis of shark DNA has thrown a wrench into our understanding of these sharp-toothed predators and their evolutionary ...

A research team led by Profs. Zhu Min, Lu Jing, and Zhu You'an from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published two back-to-back ...

These days, all fish have teeth. The shapes of their teeth vary according to diet, ranging from the little pegs of goldfish ...

What is a vertebrate?. Vertebrates in context ; What makes a vertebrate? ; Breaking branches ; Summary -- Shaking the tree. Embranchements and transformation ; Evolution and ancestors ; Summary -- ...

Researchers report February 15 in the journal Cell that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin—and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic ...

Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head. By Carl Zimmer Look at ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have evolved testicles of all different sizes. In almost all these separate cases, ...