Tiny pigment granules in fossil fish eyes mirror patterns in living species, revealing ancient clues to vision and raising ...

Paleontologists at University College Cork have discovered that the evolution of fish is linked to the shape, location and ...

Paired appendages—the pectoral and pelvic fins of fishes and the forelimbs and hindlimbs of tetrapods—were a major innovation ...

Viewed from above, Danionella cerebrum offers a rare sight in a vertebrate: its brain, visible through the top of its head. Since the species was adopted for neuroscience research in 2018 and formally ...

The sympathetic nervous system, which enables the fight-or-flight response, was thought to be present only in jawed vertebrates. Analysis of a jawless vertebrate suggests that this system might be a ...

Walking is a complex mechanism involving both automatic processes and conscious control. Its dysfunction can have multiple, sometimes extremely subtle causes, within the motor cortex, brain stem, ...

Researchers report that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin -- and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic element or 'retrotransposon' is ...

Innate immunity is an ancient and highly diversified layer of host defense. In vertebrates its evolution has been tied closely to the origin and ...

A team of herpetologists at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz just reported that a tiny frog found only in a hilltop forest in southern Bahia, Brazil, may be the smallest vertebrate in the world ...

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. From frogs and fish to birds and ...

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 ...