  A new method for determining whether or not a mitrochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
sequence belongs to a vertebrate is described and tested. This method only
needs the mtDNA sequence of the organism in question, and unlike alignment
based methods, it does not require it to be compared with anything else. The
method is tested on all 1877 mtDNA sequences that were on NCBI's nucleotide
database on August 12, 2009, and works in 94.57% of the cases. Furthermore, all
organisms on which this method failed are closely related phylogenetically in
comparison to all other organisms included in the study. A list of potential
extensions to this method and open problems that emerge out of this study is
presented at the end.
