Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.

The most ancient fish were jawless, and since our whole group has jaws, we can safely choose a jawless fish as a fairly recent ancestor. Unfortunately, this ancestor is long dead. To compare ...

In this study, Sharma and colleagues examined the anatomy and development of joints in members of two early-branching vertebrate lineages: one species of jawless fish, sea lampreys, and two ...