The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vertebrate \Ver"te*brate\, Vertebrated \Ver"te*bra`ted\, a. [L. vertebratus.]
(Anat.) Having a backbone, or vertebral column, containing the spinal marrow, as man, quadrupeds, birds, amphibia, and fishes.
(Bot.) Contracted at intervals, so as to resemble the spine in animals.
--Henslow.(Zo["o]l.) Having movable joints resembling vertebr[ae]; -- said of the arms ophiurans.
(Zo["o]l.) Of or pertaining to the Vertebrata; -- used only in the form vertebrate.
Wiktionary
a. vertebrate; having vertebrae
Usage examples of "vertebrated".
Remains of fishes have been detected in rocks immediately over the Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples of vertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet.
The old gills with which the ancestral fish of the vertebrated line had breathed were inadaptable to breathing upon land, and in the case of this division of the animal kingdom it is the swimming bladder of the fish which becomes a new, deep-seated breathing organ, the lung.
Among the lower animals, up even to those first cousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its competitor altogether.