Two species of small, deep-dwelling fish called pearlsides possess eye cells that break the rules of vertebrate vision, combining features of rods and cones into a single hybrid photoreceptor never ...

Something that is only a blot in a slab of Silurian rock may still contain the map of an eye to where a nerve once led. A pair of tiny, jawless fishes discovered at Lesmahagow, South of Glasgow have ...

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

The most effective conservation strategies for protecting vertebrates on a global scale are those aimed at mitigating the effects of overexploitation, habitat loss and climate change, which are the ...

The deep sea is cold, dark and under immense pressure. Yet life has found a way to prevail there, in the form of some of Earth’s strangest creatures. Since deep-sea critters have adapted to near ...

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.

New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine—including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians—evolved. In a paper ...

The Marine Vertebrate Collection (MVC) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego (ASIH Collection Code: SIO) , is one of the largest and most comprehensive fish collections in the world ...

The neural plate border region of vertebrate embryos gives rise to the neural crest and cranial placodes. Although the basal chordate amphioxus lacks a neural crest and most placodes, comparisons of ...