Fossil finds are exciting moments that sometimes introduce the world to an ancient mammal or dinosaur that existed millions ...

New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine—including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians—evolved. In a paper ...

New fossil evidence is overturning a long-held assumption about how vertebrates first transitioned from water to land. The hatchlings of three different animals related to the earliest land-goers show ...

A research team at Yunnan University has resolved a longstanding mystery regarding Earth’s earliest vertebrates, revealing that primitive fish from the Cambrian Period likely possessed four ...

A newly discovered fossil "treasure hoard" dating back some 436 million years to the early Silurian period reveals, for the first time, the complete body shape and form of some of the first jawed ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...

A large, crocodile-like animal that lived more than 340 million years ago was one of the earliest vertebrates to have a fast-growing phase in its youth.