Mammals' backbones are weird. They're much more complex than the spines of other land animals like reptiles. Scientists wanted to find out how these complex backbones evolved in the first place. They ...

The backbone is the Swiss Army Knife of mammal locomotion. It can function in all sorts of ways that allows living mammals to have remarkable diversity in their movements. They can run, swim, climb ...

Researchers compared modern and ancient animals to explore how mammalian vertebrae have evolved into sophisticated physical structures that can carry out multiple functions. The comparison between ...

The mammal tree of life is a real leaner. Some branches are weighed down with thousands of species — we’re looking at you, rodents and bats — while others hold just a few species. Now we may have a ...

If you've ever seen a dolphin swim, you may have wondered why they undulate their bodies up and down when swimming, instead of side to side as fishes do. Though they have a fishlike body, cetaceans (a ...

The hero shrew — a small, ratlike animal with a bizarrely strong and oddly shaped backbone — has mystified scientists since it was first described more than 100 years ago. Now, a newly discovered ...

Conspicuously absent from the long list of animals that have inspired pop culture superheroes are shrews—small, mole-like mammals that love to eat insects. But perhaps these demure little creatures ...

Mammals' backbones are weird. Compared to other four-legged animals like reptiles, mammal spines are a complex mix of sections of differently-shaped bones. Our Frankenstein's monster backbones are a ...