The way in which most multicellular organisms have been classified has been the same for more than a century. Only recently have scientists developed the tools and knowledge to question the way we ...

The Middle Cambrian chordate known as Pikaia gracilens was once thought to be humanity’s earliest known ancestor, and the earliest known member of the phylum Chordata. Now, a new study flips this ...

Despite much investigation, the origin of the phylum Chordata, which contains all vertebrates including ourselves, remains unclear. The central nervous system (CNS) could hold the answers. So solving ...

The planktonic organism <em>Oikopleura dioica</em>, an animal model in the study of evolution and embryonic development in our phylum (chordates), has lost most of ...

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Researchers at Osaka University find that a tadpole-like tunicate with nonconventional left-right patterning lacks the Nodal gene found in other chordates and uses Ca 2+ oscillation and right-sided ...