chordateadj.n.

1883 Proc. Royal Soc. 1882–3 34 449 If ever we come to see how the Vertebrata have arisen, during time, from chordate forms on a lower platform, we shall have to question and cross-question these Marsipobranchs.

1913 W. E. Kellicott Textbk. Gen. Embryol. viii. 333 The establishment of the rudiments of the axial notochord and central nervous system, characteristic structures of the Chordate embryo, is termed notogenesis.

1959 A. Hardy Fish & Fisheries v. 116 The most primitive of all chordate animals, the acorn-worm Balanoglossus and its relatives.

1978 Q. Rev. Biol. 53 73/1 I recommend this book for an undergraduate course in chordate biology.

2002 Times 22 May (Business section) 33/2 He considered that human beings might not have evolved but for the chance survival of a primitive chordate ancestor in the Cambrian period.

1893 Amer. Naturalist 27 893 The failure to recognize the Chordates as a valid division seems also a questionable procedure.

1913 W. E. Kellicott Textbk. Gen. Embryol. viii. 357 The inner, outer, and middle layers cannot be exactly homologized with those of other Chordates.

1927 J. B. S. Haldane & J. S. Huxley Animal Biol. ii. 79 They are therefore all classed as Vertebrates (or Chordates, with reference to the notochord).

1958 Oxf. Univ. Gaz. 23 Apr. 892 Studies on the nervous systems of lower chordates.

2005 Nature 17 Mar. 283/2 This super-phylum includes the chordates—back-boned animals such as ourselves—and the hemichordates (‘half-chordates’).