Our bones did not begin deep inside the body. They started in the skin, not long after the first complex animals took shape. Ever since, skin bones have remained a recurring motif in evolution. Yet we ...

Bones did not originally form deep inside the body. They started in the skin soon after the first complex animals took shape. Ever since, ‘skin bones’ have appeared again and again in evolution.

Reptiles have been growing armor in their skin on and off for hundreds of millions of years, but scientists never fully understood how it evolved. A massive new evolutionary study shows these skin ...