It is worth noting that this means that we ourselves are chordates.

The largest chordates are also the largest animals known to have existed: blue whales.

But the question of exactly where those first chordates came from has long proved controversial.

A sequence of duplication and divergence events of the different galectins in chordates is proposed.

A few living chordates still retain the ancient backbone-free condition where the notochord offers support.

Chordata All the animals pictured here are chordates.

There are over 64,000 living species, and many more known fossil chordates.

They belong in a more inclusive category called the chordates, which incorporates vertebrates and a few vertebrate-like groups.

Finally, cross-species comparisons between Ciona and the mouse evoke the deep evolutionary origins of cardiopharyngeal networks in chordates.

With the availability of an increasing number of whole genome sequences in chordates, exhaustive comparisons of multigene families become feasible.

The ancient swimming tailed blimp-like vetulicolians uncomfortably sit within chordates (the natural home for problematic swimmy socky organisms it seems).

CTHRC1 is a secreted 28-kDa protein that is glycosylated and highly conserved from lower chordates to mammals.

As it is absent from primitive chordates and invertebrates, cytotoxic cells from these lineages must possess a different effector molecule or cytotoxic mechanism.

The lancelet, or amphioxus, is a translucent, fish-like creature that represents one of the only surviving lineages of non-vertebrate chordates in the modern age.

(1996) give 1.2 billion for protostomes vs. deuterostomes, and 1.0 billion for echinoderms vs. chordates; while Bromham et al.

Then, one of those early deuterostomes became the very first chordate by gaining a notochord.