Metazoa comprises 35–40 phyla that include some 1.3 million described species.
Phylogenetic analyses of metazoan interrelationships have progressed in the past two …

Deuterostomes are a monophyletic group of animals that include the vertebrates,
invertebrate chordates, ambulacrarians and xenoturbellids. Fossil representatives from most …

Diverse bilaterian clades emerged apparently within a few million years during the early
Cambrian, and various environmental, developmental, and ecological causes have been …

Dating the tree of life is a core endeavor in evolutionary biology. Rates of evolution are
fundamental to nearly every evolutionary model and process. Rates need dates. There is …

The first edition of Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems was widely praised for its coverage and
approach in describing and illustrating 14 well-known fossil sites from around the world. The …

Recent fossil discoveries from the lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale (EBS) on Kangaroo
Island, South Australia, have provided critical insights into the tempo of the Cambrian …

Fossil organisms offer our only direct insight into how the distinctive body plans of extant
organisms were assembled. However, realizing the potential evolutionary significance of …

The early history of deuterostomes, the group composed of the chordates, echinoderms and
hemichordates, is still controversial, not least because of a paucity of stem representatives of …

Different sources of data on the evolution of segmentation lead to very different conclusions.
Molecular similarities in the developmental pathways generating a segmented body plan …

Our understanding of vertebrate origins and the backbone of human history evolves with
each new fossil find and DNA map. Many species have now had their genomes sequenced …