The vertebrate retina first evolved some 500 million years ago in ancestral marine
chordates. Since then, the eyes of different species have been tuned to best support their …

The discovery of the Fezouata biota in the latest Tremadocian of southeastern Morocco has
significantly changed our understanding of the early Phanerozoic radiation. The shelly fossil …

Ancient polyploidization events have had a lasting impact on vertebrate genome structure,
organization and function. Some key questions regarding the number of ancient …

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly
assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious …

Hagfish depart so much from other fishes anatomically that they were sometimes considered
not fully vertebrate. They may represent:(i) an anatomically primitive outgroup of vertebrates …

Euarthropoda is one of the best-preserved fossil animal groups and has been the most
diverse animal phylum for over 500 million years. Fossil Konservat-Lagerstätten, such as …

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and
geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic …

Deuterostomes are the major division of animal life which includes sea stars, acorn worms,
and humans, among a wide variety of ecologically and morphologically disparate taxa …

The interrelationships between major living vertebrate, and even chordate, groups are now
reasonably well resolved thanks to a large amount of generally congruent data derived from …

Pharyngeal arches are a key innovation that likely contributed to the evolution of the jaws
and braincase of vertebrates. It has long been hypothesized that the pharyngeal (branchial) …