During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots separated by large areas of deep ocean. In these zones, surviving jawed ...

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

One of Earth’s earliest mass extinctions wiped out most ocean life during a sudden global ice age. From the ruins, jawed vertebrates survived, diversified, and transformed the course of evolution.

The study of early vertebrates provides an essential window into the evolutionary processes that shaped modern biodiversity. Fossil discoveries spanning the Silurian to Devonian periods reveal a ...

A study published in the Nature journal alters how the evolution of fish has been historically understood. Fossilized fish and other sea creatures have often been pivotal in new scientific discoveries ...

Did you know that your knees, hips, and fingers all rely on the same type of joint that evolved hundreds of millions of years ...

A devastating ice age wiped out most marine life, yet new research reveals how this ancient disaster unexpectedly paved the ...

An event that seemed to condemn marine life 445 million years ago actually played a decisive role in the rise of the animals ...

Researchers have traced cell origins critical to vertebrate evolution by studying a group of primitive, bloodsucking fish called lampreys. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

Ancient viruses have really gotten on our nerves, but in the best of ways. One particular retrovirus — embedded in the DNA of jawed vertebrates — helps turn on production of a protein needed to ...

Researchers report February 15 in the journal Cell that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin—and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic ...