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The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebrata with some 65,000 species, by far the largest grouping in the phylum Chordata. The vertebrates include mammals, birds, amphibians, and various classes of fish and reptiles. The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata.
Chordates are also bilaterally symmetric, have a coelom, possess a closed circulatory system, and exhibit metameric segmentation. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson (1885), it was already in prevalent use by 1880. Ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866.
The Chordata ancestor gave rise to the lancelets (Amphioxii) and Olfactores. Ancestral chordates evolved a post-anal tail , notochord , and endostyle (precursor of thyroid). The pharyngeal slits (or gills ) are now supported by connective tissue and used for filter feeding and possibly breathing .
Segmentation in animals typically falls into three types, characteristic of different arthropods, vertebrates, and annelids. Arthropods such as the fruit fly form segments from a field of equivalent cells based on transcription factor gradients. Vertebrates like the zebrafish use oscillating gene expression to define segments known as somites.
This article contains a list of all of the classes and orders that are located in the Phylum Chordata. The subphyla Tunicata and Vertebrata are in the unranked Olfactores clade, while the subphylum Cephalochordata is not. Animals in Olfactores are characterized as having a more advanced olfactory system than animals not in it.
Olfactores is a clade within the Chordata that comprises the Tunicata (Urochordata) and the Vertebrata [citation needed] (sometimes referred to as Craniata).Olfactores represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, as the Cephalochordata are the only chordates not included in the clade.
In 2012 researchers classify the conodonts in the phylum Chordata on the basis of their fins with fin rays, chevron-shaped muscles and notochord. [13] Some researchers see them as vertebrates similar in appearance to modern hagfish and lampreys, [14] though phylogenetic analysis suggests that they are more derived than either of these groups. [15]
This, combined with an apparent lack of vertebral elements within the Myxini, suggested that the Myxini were descended from a more ancient lineage than the vertebrates, and that the skull developed before the vertebral column. The clade was thus composed of the Myxini and the vertebrates, and any extinct chordates with skulls.