Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, ...

Ancient fossils from South China reveal the earliest bony fishes and shed new light on how jaws, teeth, and key vertebrate features evolved before the major fish lineages diverged.

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

A newly discovered fossil "treasure hoard" dating back some 436 million years to the early Silurian period reveals, for the first time, the complete body shape and form of some of the first jawed ...

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 ...

Protecting large swaths of Earth's land can help stem the tide of biodiversity loss -- especially when those protected areas are in less disturbed landscapes and in countries with effective national ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...