Our very ancient animal ancestors had tails. Why don't we? Somewhere around 20 million or 25 million years ago, when apes diverged from monkeys, our branch of the tree of life shed tails.

Lemurs, lizards, whales — all are famed for their tails in some way. But which animal has the longest tail of all? In proportion to their bodies, grass lizards have the longest tails of any ...

tails, and appendages, all specialized segments performing specialized functions. All animal evolution for the last half billion years has come from tinkering with these Cambrian body plans.

The long structures seen in manta rays and their relatives function as an early warning system ... more streamlined as it approaches the animal’s tail. But in the cownose ray, the more complex ...

Previous research revealed that maintaining stiffness in the tail vane was crucial to enabling early pterosaurs ... of millions of years, we can put skin on the bone of animals we will never ...