Chordates

"Chordates are animals with backbones. Animal groups in the chordate phylum include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Animals with backbones are the most highly evolved groups of animals, the most complex and complicated. They have interior skeletons and have bilateral symmetry. They have more advanced brains. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, about half are bony fish of the class Osteichthyes. The world’s largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. This book envisages on the evolutionary genetics and relationships of chordates."