An illustration of the Devonian-period fish Dunkleosteus at its old presumed length of about 30 feet. A 360 million-year-old sea monster that was once thought to be as big as a bus was actually less ...

An illustration of the Devonian period fish, Dunkleosteus, preying on eurypterids (sea scorpions), which in turn were feeding on the smaller trilobites. Depleting oxygen and rising hydrogen sulfide ...

About 375 million years ago, armored fishes ruled a watery world. Known as placoderms, these jawed vertebrates came in all shapes and sizes, from small bottom-dwellers to giant filter-feeders. Some, ...

Ray-finned fish, now the most diverse group of backboned animals, were not as hard hit by a mass extinction event 360 million years ago as scientists previously thought. Ray-finned fish, now the most ...

Climate change and asteroids are linked with animal origin and extinction – and plate tectonics also seems to play a key evolutionary role, ‘groundbreaking’ new fossil research reveals. The discovery ...

Scientists have unearthed a fossilized fish that was once the biggest vertebrate of its day. The predatory sea creature, dubbed Megamastax amblyodus, which means "big mouth, blunt teeth," prowled the ...

The story of how vertebrates got their teeth is much older than researchers realized, new findings show. In a paper published Thursday in the journal Science, scientists examined the teeth of three ...

The human hand is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, beginning with lobe-finned fish in the Devonian period. Early species like Tiktaalik developed limb-like fins capable of ...

The group of early jawed fishes traditionally referred to the Acanthodii is emerging as pivotal in our understanding of our own beginnings. The oldest history of these animals is poorly known, mostly ...

An ancient Elpistostege fish fossil found in Miguasha, Canada, has revealed new insights into how the human hand evolved from fish fins. Paleontologists have revealed the fish specimen has yielded the ...