During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots separated by large areas of deep ocean. In these zones, surviving jawed ...

A massive ice age wiped out ocean life 445 million years ago, reshaping ecosystems and setting the stage for jawed fish evolution.

A devastating ice age wiped out most marine life, yet new research reveals how this ancient disaster unexpectedly paved the ...

Discover how the first mass extinction put jawed fishes on the map, species that would later come to dominate animal life on the planet. Past mass extinctions, as devastating as they are, have shaped ...

A rapid climate collapse during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction devastated ocean life and reshuffled Earth’s ecosystems. In the aftermath, jawed vertebrates gained an unexpected edge by surviving ...

The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a new study. The efficient ...

One of Earth’s earliest mass extinctions wiped out most ocean life during a sudden global ice age. From the ruins, jawed vertebrates survived, diversified, and transformed the course of evolution.

A study published in the Nature journal alters how the evolution of fish has been historically understood. Fossilized fish and other sea creatures have often been pivotal in new scientific discoveries ...

Earth’s first fish arrived about half a billion years ago, but not anywhere near the ocean’s surface. Instead, they started their evolutionary lives much closer to the seafloor, where they could suck ...

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 ...