Lab rats have rights. Before researchers in the United States can experiment on the animals, they need approval from committees that ensure they follow federal regulations for housing and handling the ...

A set of jaws can invoke visions of deadly toothy sharks, and now scientists find the earliest fish with chops — the ancestors of all jawed creatures with backbones — were also armed with teeth, ...

Our backbones helped us and other vertebrate animals conquer the oceans, and move onto land and into skies. Until now, the early history of the group have been a bit of a mystery, but a new analysis ...

The Tully monster, a bizarre beast that plied the seas 307 million years ago, has long mystified scientists. Its features, including eyes like a hammerhead’s and a pincer-like mouth, look like they ...

Early jawless fish were likely to have used bony projections surrounding their mouths to modify the mouth’s shape while they collected food. Experts led by the University of Birmingham have used CT ...

Bees are not the only animals that carry pollen from flower to flower. Species with backbones, among them bats, birds, mice, and even lizards, also serve as pollinators. Although less familiar as ...

Vertebrates are animals with a backbone. You are a vertebrate. And now, a researcher has formally described the world’s tiniest vertebrate — a new species of frog. The frog measures less than ...

'Junk DNA' could hold the secret of the evolutionary origin of complex animals, according to new research. Vertebrates - animals such as humans that possess a backbone - are the most anatomically and ...

Unlike vertebrate embryo cells, which signal to each other over long distances, sea squirt embryo cells talk only to those they’re closest to. By Katherine J. Wu Building a body from scratch is a ...