Half a Billion Years of Backbones

Early in the Cambrian period, some 530 million years ago, an immense variety of invertebrate
animals inhabited Earth’s oceans. Predators used sharp claws
and mandibles to capture and break apart their prey. Many animals had protective spikes or armor
as well as modified mouthparts that enabled their bearers to
filter food from the water.
Amidst this bustle, it would have been easy to overlook certain slender, 3-cmlong creatures gliding
through the water: members of the species Myllokunmingia
fengjiaoa (Figure 34.1). Although lacking armor and appendages, this ancient
species was closely related to one of the most successful groups of animals ever to
swim, walk, slither, or fly: the vertebrates, which derive their name from vertebrae,
the series of bones that make up the vertebral column, or backbone.
For more than 150 million years, vertebrates were restricted to the oceans, but
about 365 million years ago, the evolution of limbs in one lineage of vertebrates
set the stage for these vertebrates to colonize land. Over time, as the descendants
of these early colonists adapted to life on land, they gave rise to the three groups
of terrestrial vertebrates alive today: amphibians, reptiles (including birds), and
mammals.
brain and bipeda
There are more than 57,000 species of vertebrates, a relatively small number compared to, say, the
1 million insect
species on Earth. But what vertebrates may lack in number
of species, they make up for in disparity, varying enormously
in characteristics such as body mass. Vertebrates include
the heaviest animals ever to walk on land, plant-eating dinosaurs that were as massive as 40,000 kg
(more than 13 pickup
trucks). The biggest animal ever to exist on Earth is also a
vertebrate—the blue whale, which can exceed 100,000 kg. On
the other end of the spectrum, the fish Schindleria brevipinguis, discovered in 2004, is just 8.4 mm
long and has a mass
roughly 100 billion times smaller than that of a blue whale.
In this chapter, you will learn about current hypotheses regarding the origins of vertebrates from
invertebrate ancestors.
We will track the evolution of the vertebrate body plan, from
a notochord to a head to a mineralized skeleton. We’ll also
explore the major groups of vertebrates (both living and extinct), as well as the evolutionary
history of our own species—
Homo sapiens