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 ...

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 ...

(Reuters) - Scientists in Australia have unearthed beautifully preserved fossilized hearts and other internal organs of ancient armored fish in a discovery that provides insight into the evolution of ...

Life on Earth has come a long way from the first simple microscopic organisms that sprang forth in the primordial soup billions of years ago to the great variety of plants and animals on the planet ...

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 ...

These days, all fish have teeth. The shapes of their teeth vary according to diet, ranging from the little pegs of goldfish to the formidable, pointed teeth of sharks. But fish evolved from toothless ...

Devonian placoderms exhibit exceptional diversity in jaw and dental morphology, making them an ideal system for examining early gnathostome feeding mechanisms. Here, we investigate inferognathal ...

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 ...

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 ...