chordates

Cultural  

1. Animals that have a central nerve like the human spinal cord.

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Chordates make up a phylum in the animal kingdom that includes all the vertebrates, along with some primitive wormlike sea animals. (See Linnean classification.)

Example Sentences

Swalla studies the evolution of chordates, the phylum that includes both vertebrates and tunicates.

From Scientific American

During the Cambrian, which began about 540 million years ago, nearly all modern animal groups—as diverse as mollusks and chordates—leapt into the fossil record.

From Science Magazine

Some of the problems that once stalled progress — such as uncertainty over which groups belong in the deuterostome lineage of animals alongside chordates — have largely been resolved.

From Nature

Having established a hazy picture of the earliest chordates, Gee focuses on building vertebrates and their defining features from the basic chordate body plan, for example through spectacular innovations in the vertebrate head.

From Nature

The morphological divide between chordates and their closest relatives remains perilously large, and even with new advances, Gee’s hypothesis is a good contender; but it is not the only one, so the bridge to early chordates remains a little wobbly.

From Nature