Jaws are crucial to the evolutionary success of many animals, yet their origins have long been shrouded in mystery. Now a new discovery is shedding light on how the jaws of ancient fishes are related ...

The placoderms were a diverse group of ancient armoured fishes and it’s widely believed that they are ancestral to virtually all vertebrates alive today, including humans. Placoderms dominated aquatic ...

Around 400 million years ago, during a geological era often celebrated by paleontologists as the "Age of Fishes," the global ...

We humans use the euphemism for sex that "we like to get a leg over" but the first jawed vertebrates – the placoderms – they liked to get a leg in. They were the first back-boned creatures to evolve ...

Most fish on Earth today are ray-finned fishes: minnows, anchovies, catfish, bluefish, groupers, flatfish, bonitos, you name ...

Sex is an ancient tradition. It’s older than today’s continents, older than dinosaurs, older than trees, dating back to a time when vertebrate life thrived in the seas but had not yet ventured onto ...

Biologists have long been stumped while thinking about where jaw evolution may have begun with life on Earth. One of the most likely candidates for jaw evolution has been traced back to placoderms, a ...

Researchers in Australia have uncovered the oldest record of live birth — viviparity — in any vertebrate (see page 650). The discovery of embryos in fossils of placoderms (ancient, armoured, jawed ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...