A new model using sturgeon as a material analog has made it possible to estimate how the backbones of some of the first animals on land could and could not move. These results disprove a long-standing ...

Tetrapods are organisms that evolved from fish to have four limbs and digits. These animals include frogs, cats and even humans. After analyzing over 100 skull bones in extinct and non-extinct ...

Around 262 million years ago, during the middle Permian Period, a new family of reptiles emerged. Pareiasaurs—meaning "cheek lizards," a reference to the flat flanges of bone that make up their cheeks ...

The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct and living fish, limiting their evolution for millions of years, according to a latest study. The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct ...

Gaiasia jennyae, a newly discovered freshwater apex predator with a body length reaching 4.5 meters, lurked in the swamps and lakes around 280 million years ago. Its wide, flattened head had powerful ...

Material tests on lake sturgeon reveal that the earliest land-dwelling vertebrates had surprisingly rigid necks, suggesting ...

The discovery of a 3-metre fossil tetrapod in the Ugab River valley in Namibia has undermined theories about the evolution of these ancient four-legged creatures. Basal tetrapods were animals at the ...

A new model has made it possible to estimate how the backbones of some of the first animals on land could and could not move using sturgeon as a ...