Researchers have shed new light on the features that enable tree-dwelling mammals to move effectively through their environments, providing insights into the evolution of the distinct upright postures ...

Animals from completely different branches of the tree of life, such as insects, worms and vertebrates, independently evolved similar genetic solutions to survive on land, according to a new study ...

The gliding animals of south-east Asia have something in common with the Himalayas. Both owe their existence to the collision of India with Eurasia around 50 million years ago. In the wake of the ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Known as the Cambrian Explosion, this flurry of rapid evolution produced most of the animal phyla and ecosystems we see around us today. And it may have taken off because some of those early animals ...

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE AND NOTES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- 1. Before Animals -- 2. Phylogenetics and the Base of the Animal Tree of Life -- 3. Ctenophora -- 4 ...

Phylogenomic analysis harnesses genome-scale data sets to reconstruct the deep branches of the animal tree of life, resolving longstanding debates about the relationships among major lineages such as ...

Scientists revealed first animal on Earth: Emerging research proposes that placozoans could be the oldest animals on Earth, ...