The water-to-land transition stands as one of the most significant events in vertebrate evolution, giving rise to the two ...

Parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction in which an egg develops in the absence of fertilisation, has traditionally been associated with invertebrates. However, recent discoveries have ...

Behavioral lateralization, the preferential use of one side of the body and its corresponding brain hemisphere, is a pervasive aspect of vertebrate neurobiology. This phenomenon, which manifests in ...

From genetics alone, scientists can now predict how long any of myriad different creatures can live. The “lifespan clock” estimates vertebrate animals’ (those with a backbone) longevity — including ...

Scientists have long observed that embryos of different species within a phylum look quite distinct at early and late developmental stages but resemble one another more during mid-embryogenesis, a ...

New fossil evidence from China suggests that some of our vertebrate ancestors had four eyes. The study, published in Nature, takes a closer look at a structure found in multiple 518 million-year-old ...

The researchers from the HiLIFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki compared two central bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps): a normal one and a mutant with no body scales. They ...

A cheetah pouncing on a gazelle. A bear snatching a fish out of the water with its claws. And the most dangerous predator of them all? A human and their pet bird dancing to “Gangnam Style.” Scientists ...

A team of herpetologists at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz just reported that a tiny frog found only in a hilltop forest in southern Bahia, Brazil, may be the smallest vertebrate in the world ...

Learn how increased protein diversity in signaling genes may have helped drive the shift from invertebrates to vertebrates, reshaping how animals with a spine evolved. From frogs and fish to birds and ...

Vertebrates have extremely different brain sizes: even with the same body size, brain size can vary a hundredfold. As a rule, mammals and birds have the largest brains in relation to their body size, ...

Learn how a second pair of eyes helped this 518-million-year-old fish evade predators. Spiders have eight eyes, bees have five, and boxed jellyfish have 24 — but these are the exceptions. The vast ...