The origin of all living vertebrates just got more mysterious. Since the 1970s, many evolutionary biologists have considered an eel-like, deep-sea-dwelling creature called the hagfish to be the ...

Researchers have elucidated the evolutionary origins of placodes and neural crests, which are defining features of vertebrates, through lineage tracing and genetic analysis in Ciona intestinalis, a ...

Researchers at EPFL have created the first 4D lipid atlas of vertebrate development, revealing how fats shape our bodies from ...

Biologists have considered nearly every major taxon of animals as the key starting point for the evolution of vertebrates. We survey these ideas, many of which are no longer tenable in the light of ...

An amphioxus in the Daniel Medeiros lab is seen with most of its body burrowed into sand and its mouth exposed, as it waits for food to drift by. Photo by David Jandzik. The findings suggest that the ...