Scientists have uncovered an unexpected genetic shift that may explain how animals with backbones first emerged and became so diverse.

Many spine-bearing creatures, or vertebrates, have a curious bit of tissue deep in their brains called the pineal gland. It ...

Every mammal, every fish, every vertebrate (creatures that have a spine) has two eyes. It’s been that way for millions and ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth’s oceans turned into a danger zone. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, and shallow seas shrank fast.

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 ...

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 ...

Dedication to William Buckland / Christopher J. Duffin -- Introduction. Vertebrate coprolite studies : status and prospectus / Adrian P. Hunt ... [et al.] -- History of study. The earliest published ...

Scientists discover missing evolution puzzle piece in 130-million-year-old rocks. The discovery is a result of an international collaboration, in which the Faculty of Sciences of the University of ...

Scientists from UK have used a synchrotron in USA to investigate ancient vertebrate fossils. The remains revealed surprisingly complex eyes.