We can think of vertebrates as being different from one another in a Darwinian sense, because of natural selection and the adaptations of each species. Vertebrates have complex bodies, which they acquire through development. We hope that your term paper will focus on an aspect of this question. Studying the evolution of development merges two fields evolutionary and developmental biology. Evo-devo is a short hand for this synthesis, currently of much interest to biologists, with new information accumulating at a great rate.
Vertebrates are familiar creatures.
This is no news to you as evidenced by your success on our teddy bear self test. Our familiarity with these well-studied animals makes our chore of learning about them easier. See Chapter 1 in PJH for the meaning of the word Permian, we will want to know about the Geologic Time Table for this course. See PJH p. 195 for a more realistic interpretation of the jelly roll than the one I showed in class. Our first part course is about connections between vertebrates.