The work demonstrates the power of ancient DNA to illuminate human biology and medicine in addition to history. A massive ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

Over the past 10,000 years, evolution in West Eurasia has been selecting for light skin, red hair and resistance to HIV and ...

Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and ...

New 3D analysis of a German skull clears up decades of confusion, placing this human firmly in the modern family tree.

The human body is a machine whose many parts – from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain – have been assembled in fits and starts over the four billion years of our ...

For thousands of years, humans have selectively bred dogs to fulfill specific roles, ranging from guarding and hunting to herding and companionship. This deliberate shaping of traits has resulted in ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from new developments in ape cognition to an expanded perspective of a ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.

Some researchers hold that evolution hasn’t much altered humans in the past 10,000 years. A new analysis of ancient DNA ...

Our bodies are not perfectly designed, but are a living archive of evolution. Anatomy reveals a historical record of ...