Hagfish represent an ancient lineage of boneless and jawless vertebrates. Among several curious behaviors they exhibit, solitary individuals in one dominant genus of hagfish (Eptatretus spp.) ...

The film discusses the characteristics and classifications of chordates, a group of animals that includes vertebrates and some simpler forms. Key features of chordates include a pharyngeal breathing ...

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 ...

Vertebrate evolution was accompanied by two rounds of whole genome duplication followed by functional divergence in terms of regulatory circuits and gene expression patterns. As a basal and ...

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 ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. An extinct ...

Those of you who took high school biology may remember the lancelet, also known as the amphioxus. Its simplified body plan is notable for containing a number of features that it shares in common with ...

Researchers have elucidated the evolutionary origins of placodes and neural crests, which are defining features of vertebrates, through lineage tracing and genetic analysis in Ciona intestinalis, a ...

Scientists are divided over whether a fossil recently discovered in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia is in fact the earliest known ancestor of vertebrates - with one U.S. palaeontologist even ...