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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Lampreys, jawless fish closely related to the first vertebrates, possess 41 types of a little-known genetic regulator called microRNA. Some biologists say microRNA answers the mystery of how backbones ...

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 ...

Populations of wild animals have fallen by an average of 60 percent over the last few decades. That grim figure comes from the Living Planet Report 2018, published today by the World Wildlife Fund ...