Surprisingly, genome comparisons have failed to resolve a major question in animal evolution: Which living animals are the descendants of the earliest animals to evolve in the world's oceans?

From alligators to ostriches, the Anthropology Department's Vertebrate Osteology Collection is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. "We have over 12,000 vertebrate specimens in our collections.

All animals are related to each other, but comb jellies — a marine invertebrate found in oceans around the world — are the most distantly related to all other animals, shows a new study in Nature.