#vertebrate evolution

The coelacanth has a name that echoes through the annals of paleontology. This ancient fish holds a unique and captivating position in the history of life on Earth. Scientists once believed it vanished with the dinosaurs over 66 million years ago. The rediscovery of living specimens in the 20th century was astonishing. It transformed this ancient fish into an iconic “living fossil.” These…

Crashing waves may have spurred the evolution of backbones 

by Lucas Joel

Our backbones helped us and other vertebrate animals conquer the oceans, and move onto land and into skies. Until now, the early history of the group have been a bit of a mystery, but a new analysis suggests vertebrate animals evolved in shallow waters.

All vertebrates have backbones or spinal columns. They are thought to have begun to diversify around 480 million years ago, splitting into groups that would become jawless fish (like lampreys), cartilaginous fish (including sharks), and a lineage that includes bony fish (such as salmon). It’s this last group that ultimately gave rise to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

However, our understanding of this diversification event is hampered by the fact that most of our well-preserved fish fossils are only 360 million years old or younger...

Read More: New Scientist

Some of the great remaining mysteries in zoology concern origins — of multicellularity, complex nervous systems, life cycles and sex, for example. The evolutionary origin of vertebrates is among the most intractable of these, despite more than a century of work spanning a range of disciplines and animal groups.

In Across the Bridge, Henry Gee reviews the most recent research in this area. Gee (the senior editor responsible for palaeontology and evolutionary development at Nature) synthesizes contributions from anatomy, developmental biology, genomics, palaeontology and the study of evolutionary relationships using DNA-sequence data. He also puts forward his own ideas on this fascinating conundrum.