How to Use vertebrate in a Sentence

vertebrate

1 of 2 noun
  • Pterosaurs Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to take to the air.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Testosterone in male vertebrates is part of the steroid group of hormones.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 3 May 2023
  • Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to fly, and while some were quite small, others were enormous.
    — Curtis Brainard, Scientific American, 29 Sep. 2019
  • Frogs have the biggest eyes of any vertebrate in relation to their body size.
    — Popular Science, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Our hands came from the forelimbs of land vertebrates, which derived from the pectoral fins of fish.
    — Frans De Waal, Discover Magazine, 31 May 2019
  • The number of mammal and bird species varies from place to place, but these groups of vertebrates still span much of the world.
    — Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 1 Apr. 2018
  • First, there were vertebrates like us, but also birds and other mammals.
    — Jonny Thomson, Big Think, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, adapting to the skies long before birds would do the same.
    — Brian Switek, Smithsonian, 14 Mar. 2018
  • But a very small portion of female vertebrates are able to produce an offspring all on their own.
    — Jason Bittel, Washington Post, 30 June 2019
  • But birds, like all vertebrates, can’t synthesize carotenoid pigments on their own.
    — David Toews, The Conversation, 11 Dec. 2025
  • Connie's vertebrate was cracked as her husband watched in horror.
    — Christine MacDonald, Detroit Free Press, 22 May 2022
  • In fact, sharks and their relatives were the first vertebrate predators on Earth.
    — Lauren Kent, CNN, 28 Nov. 2019
  • Many vertebrates also form lifelong bonds.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Like all vertebrates, salamanders have a structure called a pallium that sits near the front of the brain.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 Feb. 2023
  • All vertebrates have a spine composed of a string of vertebral segments, but species vary in their number and size.
    — Quanta Magazine, 18 Sep. 2023
  • The organs are the oldest preserved in three dimensions in any jawed vertebrate.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 15 Sep. 2022
  • Whale sharks, or tiburón ballena as they’re known here, are the largest living non-mammalian vertebrate and largest shark species on the planet.
    — Krista Simmons, Sunset Magazine, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Scientists have known for years that these cells are remarkably conserved across vertebrates.
    — Melissa Cristina Márquez, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026
  • For vertebrates to have four eyes, however, is unusual in the extreme.
    — The Economist, 5 Apr. 2018
  • The flying reptiles were the first vertebrate animals to evolve powered flight.
    — Roxanne Washington, cleveland.com, 7 May 2018
  • Such conditions can result in hundreds to thousands of dead fish and other vertebrates, events known as fish kills.
    — Kelsey Lindsey, Alaska Dispatch News, 3 July 2017
  • While all mammals seem to age, other vertebrates, like reptiles, amphibians, and fish, have species that don't seem to age at all.
    — Sofia Quaglia, Discover Magazine, 20 Oct. 2023
  • This housefly-size frog, Paedophryne amauensis, has snatched the record as the world’s smallest vertebrate.
    — Amy Barth, Discover Magazine, 16 Jan. 2013
  • Birds, the warm-blooded and feathered vertebrates, are being used to put romantic partners to the test.
    — Amaris Encinas, USA Today, 11 Nov. 2025
  • Humans and their livestock have come to outweigh all other vertebrates on the planet with the exception of fish.
    — The Economist, 24 May 2018
  • Nearly a decade later, eerily parallel findings in a vertebrate would tip the scales.
    — Ingrid Wickelgren, Quanta Magazine, 30 Jan. 2026
  • How can humans sustainably co-exist with one of the world’s largest vertebrates, the Asian elephant?
    — David L. Coddon, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 May 2023
  • In death, mussels still play a role in the ecosystem, feeding muskrats, raccoons, and other riverside vertebrates.
    — Marion Renault, Wired, 18 Apr. 2020
  • Nor did anyone realize that dinosaurs still dwell among us in the form of birds, which continue to be the most diverse group of land vertebrates.
    — The Washington Post, The Mercury News, 1 Mar. 2017
  • The researchers identified genome rearrangements in the little skate that were not present in any other vertebrates.
    — Viviane Callier, Quanta Magazine, 30 May 2023

vertebrate

2 of 2 adjective
  • Do any other vertebrate groups measure up to cats in this way?
    — Kate Wong, Scientific American, 4 Oct. 2023
  • Many people now have looked in many, many vertebrate tissues.
    — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 27 July 2022
  • There are hundreds of open questions in the field of tiny vertebrate studies.
    — Mark D. Scherz, Quartz, 3 Apr. 2021
  • There are a subset of these vertebrate predators that have evolved these bony fangs on the lower jaw, which aren’t true teeth.
    — Sara Kiley Watson, Popular Science, 4 Apr. 2020
  • The project aims to be the most complete bird tree of life to date, and is the first to be done on a vertebrate animal group.
    — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 21 Apr. 2018
  • The vertebrate face doesn’t grow as one continuous sheet of tissue.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 27 June 2026
  • Was the earliest vertebrate face organized more like a shark’s or more like a mammal’s?
    — Melissa Cristina Márquez, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026
  • Parthenogenesis has been observed in more than 80 vertebrate species, about half of which are fish or lizards.
    — Corryn Wetzel, National Geographic, 25 Aug. 2020
  • It is believed to be the first time researchers have tried to relocate a vertebrate species to a new habitat because of climate change.
    — Yan Zhuang, New York Times, 12 Dec. 2022
  • The squash leaves shaded the soil and helped retain moisture while discouraging vertebrate pests with its prickly leaves.
    — Donna McClay, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 June 2021
  • In line with what other researchers have observed in vertebrate creatures at play, young bees engaged more often with the balls than older ones.
    — Lars Chittka, Scientific American, 14 June 2023
  • The first vertebrate animals to crawl onto land were relatives of the modern lungfish.
    — David George Haskell, Wired, 8 Mar. 2022
  • Taken together, both sites push the origin of vertebrate jaws and teeth back by almost 14 million years.
    — Asher Elbein, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Researchers found that the wells drew 59 other vertebrate species, 57 of which were seen drinking from the equine waters.
    — Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 May 2021
  • But these are all vertebrate mammals, and their reasoning, to different degrees, often mirrors our own.
    — Colin Dickey, New Republic, 21 Sep. 2017
  • In reality, only one percent of the world's 1,300 bat species feed on vertebrate prey.
    — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE.com, 28 Oct. 2021
  • Interestingly, the other vertebrate fliers of the Mesozoic, the pterosaurs, did not have a syrinx.
    — Michael B. Habib, Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2022
  • In total, Spinosaurus teeth made up nearly a third of the second site’s vertebrate fossils, an extremely unusual find.
    — Michael Greshko, National Geographic, 28 Apr. 2020
  • Unlike hard bones and teeth, scientists rarely find brain tissue – which is soft – preserved in vertebrate fossils, according to the researchers.
    — Amarachi Orie, CNN, 2 Feb. 2023
  • The bulk of the industry does not actually seek to replace human consumption of vertebrate meat with insects.
    — Lars Chittka, Scientific American, 14 June 2023
  • Their hands, for example, are probably the most specialized in all of the vertebrate world, with an immense fourth finger that supported the wing.
    — Michael B. Habib, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2019
  • Nile monitors are carnivores that actively hunt vertebrate prey.
    — Sergio Candido, CBS News, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Nile monitors are carnivores that actively hunt vertebrate prey.
    — Sergio Candido, Miami Herald, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Part of the story, Dunn said, may begin with fish—the most ancient vertebrate group that’s had its sour-sensing superpowers assessed and confirmed.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 8 Feb. 2022
  • Eye dominance, in this context, is ancient, part of a vertebrate inheritance that predates our lineage by hundreds of millions of years.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 27 May 2026
  • This forest keeps alive a surprising diversity of life forms, with 7 percent of the planet’s plant species and 5 percent of vertebrate species living here.
    — Alejandro Manrique, Ars Technica, 10 Feb. 2023
  • One of the greatest innovations of the vertebrate body plan, the neurocranium both protects the brain and helps to connect it to sensory organs, the mouth and more.
    — Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 3 Oct. 2023
  • My first time to see Wadi El-Hitan was my first field trip ever in vertebrate paleontology.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 3 Mar. 2017
  • In all other vertebrate species, including humans, a fusion of tissues would provoke an immune response, because the host body would treat the new tissue as an invader.
    — Eric Niiler, Wired, 31 July 2020
  • According to the law, species include any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.
    — Zach St. George, Harper's Magazine, 27 Apr. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vertebrate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: