Every biological trait requires both a proximate and evolutionary explanation. The field of
vascular biology is focused primarily on proximate mechanisms in health and disease …

Collagens, or more precisely collagen-based extracellular matrices, are often considered as
a metazoan hallmark. Among the collagens, fibrillar collagens are present from sponges to …

The Vertebrata is one of the most speciose groups of animals, comprising more than 58,000
living species. This book provides a detailed account on the comparative anatomy …

The Middle Cambrian Pikaia gracilens (Walcott) has an iconic position as a Cambrian
chordate, but until now no detailed description has been available. Here on the basis of the …

This article outlines a hypothetical sequence of evolutionary innovations, along the lineage
that produced humans, which extended behavioural control from simple feedback loops to …

The study of the evolutionary origin of vertebrates has been linked to the study of genome
duplications since Susumo Ohno suggested that the successful diversification of vertebrate …

Recent sequencing of amphioxus and sea urchin genomes has provided important data for
understanding the origins of enzymes that synthesize adrenal and sex steroids and the …

Chordates comprise lampreys, hagfishes, jawed fishes, and tetrapods, plus a variety of more
unfamiliar and crucially important non-vertebrate animal lineages, such as lancelets and sea …

Paleontological data on the appearance and development of metazoan axial symmetry are
compared with molecular genetic evidence to determine the axial body plan and growth …

The common ancestor of all vertebrates had a highly sophisticated nervous system, but
questions remain about the evolution of vertebrate neural cell types. The amphioxus, a …