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 ...

These days, all fish have teeth. The shapes of their teeth vary according to diet, ranging from the little pegs of goldfish ...

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 ...

A tiny fossil fish, roughly 3 centimeters long and approximately 436 million years old, has been identified as the oldest ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. After an ancient extinction killed about 85% of marine species, survivors in isolated refuges helped jawed vertebrates diversify ...

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 ...

A recent find in the Arctic has shed new light on the early stages of jaw and tooth evolution in vertebrates. Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) uncovered a ...

Early jawless fish were likely to have used bony projections surrounding their mouths to modify the mouth's shape while they collected food. Experts have used CT scanning techniques to build up the ...

The Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders — previously known as Annual Tables — reveal the leading institutions and countries/territories in the natural and health sciences, according to their output in ...

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 ...

In DNA, retrotransposons can move around and insert themselves into other parts of genomes with a kind of copy and paste mechanism. Most have lost this ability in humans, but they still make up a ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth’s oceans turned into a danger zone. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, and shallow seas shrank fast. Ocean chemistry also shifted hard. In what ...