A group of living things
Vertebrates
Vertebrata
Backboned animals, from fish to you.
Its members' last common ancestor lived about 520 million years ago.
You are part of this group. See how.
You are a vertebrate, and so are fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals. All of them share a backbone along the back and a skull that guards the brain. Their odd cousins include sea squirts. Adult sea squirts live fixed in place and pump water to feed, but their young swim like tiny tadpoles for a few hours before they glue down and lose the tail.
The basic plan is a head, a trunk and usually a tail. Most have two eyes, a mouth and two pairs of limbs or paired fins. The details change a lot. Fish swim with fins. Frogs have moist skin and four limbs. Reptiles such as lizards have dry scaly skin and usually four legs. Snakes have no visible legs. Birds have feathers, wings and a beak. Most mammals have fur or hair.
Vertebrates live all over the world, in the sea, in fresh water, on land and in the air. Sizes run from the smallest frog about 8 millimetres long to the largest blue whales up to about 30 metres long, as long as three buses.
One jawless group here
Lampreys have no jaws. Every other vertebrate group on this tree has jaws.
Heart, blood and kidneys
Almost all vertebrates have a heart with two to four chambers, red and white blood cells, and a pair of kidneys that drain waste.
Skin that makes more
In different groups, vertebrate skin can also make glands or hard horn.