The fossilized skull of Coccocephalus wildi, an early ray-finned fish that swam in an estuary 319 million years ago. The fish is facing to the right, with the jaws visible in the lower right portion ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Hundreds of millions of years ago, jawless fishes swam Earth’s seas, their brains protected on the outside by armored skin, and on ...

What do we have in common with fish, besides being vertebrates? The types of joints we (and most vertebrates) share most likely originated from the same common ancestor. But it’s not a feature that we ...

Artist's reconstruction showing the life stages of the fossil lamprey Priscomyzon riniensis. It lived around 360 million years ago in a coastal lagoon in what is now South Africa. Clockwise from right ...

A new study out of the University of Chicago, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Albany Museum challenges a long-held hypothesis that the blind, filter-feeding larvae of modern lampreys are a ...

March 10 (UPI) --Fossil evidence of Earth's earliest vertebrates is sparse, but many scientists agree that a model for the ancestors of the all living vertebrates can still be found in the coastal and ...

Teeth first evolved as sensory organs, not for chewing, according to a new analysis of animal fossils. The first tooth-like structures seem to have been sensitive nodules on the skin of early fish ...

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(CNN) — Hundreds of millions of years ago, jawless fishes swam Earth’s seas, their brains protected on the outside by armored skin, and on the inside by plates made of cartilage. Scientists are still ...