518-million-year-old fossil reveals vertebrates once had four eyes and extra organs that later shaped evolution.

Biologists have considered nearly every major taxon of animals as the key starting point for the evolution of vertebrates. We survey these ideas, many of which are no longer tenable in the light of ...

The vertebrate body plan emerged in concert with extensive changes to anterior chordate morphology, including assembly of a craniofacial skeleton, expansion of the anterior neuroepithelium into a ...

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 ...

Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, ...

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 ...