Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having a backbone or spinal column.
- adjective Of or characteristic of vertebrates or a vertebrate.
- noun Any of numerous chordate animals of the subphylum Vertebrata, characterized by a segmented spinal column and a distinct well-differentiated head. The vertebrates include the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To make a vertebrate of; give a backbone to; hence, figuratively, to give firmness or resolution to.
- Having vertebræ; characterized by the possession of a spinal column; backboned; in a wider sense, having a notochord, or chorda dorsalis; chordate; specifically, of or pertaining to the Vertebrata. Also
vertebrated , and (rarely) vertebral. - Same as
vertebral : as, a vertebrate theory of the skull. - In botany, contracted at intervals, like the vertebral column of animals, there being an articulation at each contraction, as in some leaves.
- noun A vertebrated animal; any member of the Vertebrata, or, more broadly, of the Chordata: as, ascidians are supposed to be vertebrates.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) One of the Vertebrata.
- adjective (Anat.) Having a backbone, or vertebral column, containing the spinal marrow, as man, quadrupeds, birds, amphibia, and fishes.
- adjective (Bot.) Contracted at intervals, so as to resemble the spine in animals.
- adjective (Zoöl.) Having movable joints resembling vertebræ; -- said of the arms of ophiurans.
- adjective (Zoöl.) Of or pertaining to the Vertebrata; -- used only in the form
vertebrate .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Having a
backbone . - noun An
animal having a backbone.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having a backbone or spinal column
- noun animals having a bony or cartilaginous skeleton with a segmented spinal column and a large brain enclosed in a skull or cranium
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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One species of vertebrate is added to the endangered list each week, IUCN report warns at biodiversity summit?
One-fifth of world's back-boned animals face extinction, study warns Jonathan Watts in Nagoya 2010
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Bio/Rocks is the blog of Sarah, a graduate student in vertebrate paleontology at UC Berkeley.
Added to the Blogroll Peggy 2008
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Bio/Rocks is the blog of Sarah, a graduate student in vertebrate paleontology at UC Berkeley.
Archive 2008-02-01 Peggy 2008
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Anyway, a seminal work in vertebrate paleontology, and I didn't have a copy, so thank you.
"This feeling is not sadness, this feeling is not joy..." (pt. 2) robyn_ma 2008
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Tyrannosaurs, terror birds, touracos and tamanduas: the hottest news in vertebrate palaeontology.
Archive 2006-04-01 Darren Naish 2006
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I really should stop talking to other people qualified in vertebrate palaeontology.
Archive 2006-12-01 Darren Naish 2006
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I really should stop talking to other people qualified in vertebrate palaeontology.
Matt Wedel: officially, a bastard Darren Naish 2006
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; it was the most interesting and surprising thing in vertebrate feeding I have seen in several years, Westneat said.
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The animal kingdom consists, first, of a sub-kingdom of animals which possess a spinal column, or backbone, and which are known as vertebrate animals.
Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky Various 1880
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"This seems to be the first example seen in the wild of a sexual escapade between a mammal and a different kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish," although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate — including dead things — objects, "said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa."
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