Shared complexities of backbone segmentation between cartilaginous fishes and tetrapods originate much earlier in vertebrate evolution than previously thought.

New morphological data of a primitive placoderm fish demonstrate both high regionalization of squamation and the bipartite histological structure of scale are plesiomorphic for jawed vertebrates.

The new whale shark genome assembly represents the best gapless chondrichthyan genome assembly yet, and comparative genomic analyses provide insights into the evolution of vertebrate genome origins, immunity, and gigantism.

Islands of non-methylated DNA are shown to perform a similar epigenetic role in many different vertebrate species.

PRDM9 is widely conserved across vertebrates yet has been lost numerous times, as has its role in directing meiotic recombination.

Newly recovered lumbar vertebrae belonging to Malapa Hominin 2, an adult female of the fossil hominin species Australopithecus sediba, demonstrate that this individual was adapted to upright posture and bipedal locomotion but also had adaptations for climbing in trees.

During vertebrate axial extension, the tail bud originates from the activation of a developmental module in a subset of axial progenitors, concurrent but different to gastrulation.

Through a single mutation at position 188, vertebrate rhodopsin acquires the ability to recover the dark state from the active state by a thermal reaction and by a photoreaction.

The primitive state of vertebrate lungs is unpaired, evolving to be truly paired in the lineage towards the tetrapods, increasing the pulmonary efficiency during the water-to-land transition.

Two putative long noncoding RNAs in zebrafish encode micropeptides with homology to the vertebrate-specific chromatin architectural protein, Hmgn1, which are required for development of vertebrate-specific brain cell types.