Zool. [mod.L. (Cuvier), a. L. vertebrāta (sc. animālia), neut. pl. of vertebrātus VERTEBRATE a.]
1. With the. A division of the animal kingdom including all animals that have a backbone or its equivalent.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xxviii. III. 44. The difference here between Insects and the Vertebrata seems very wide.
1834. McMurtrie, Cuvier’s Anim. Kingd., 232. The blood of the Mollusca … appears to contain a smaller proportionate quantity of fibrine than that of the Vertebrata.
1843. Penny Cycl., XXVI. 277/2. In the Vertebrata the brain and principal trunk or chord of the nervous system is enclosed in bony or gristly case composed of the skull and the vertebræ.
1877. Huxley, Anat. Inv. Anim., 49. Even the hiatus between the Vertebrata and the Invertebrata, is partly, if not wholly, bridged over.
2. A group or class of these; a number of vertebrate animals.
1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann., IV. vii. 644. The geologist, without seeking to reanimate these extinct vertebrata, learns much regarding the past from … their colossal remains.
1855. H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol. (1872), I. I. i. 4. Between the water-breathing vertebrata and air-breathing vertebrata there is an equally conspicuous unlikeness in energy.
1870. Rolleston, Anim. Life, 5. In every Mammalian skeleton … the vertebrae in the trunk always differ from those of the different lower vertebrata in one or more the following points: [etc.].
