Discover the latest news, features and articles about the origin of the human species and what makes us different from our ...

Studying human evolution involves piecing together scattered clues about how we survived against tough odds. One of the biggest mysteries is understanding how large or small ancient human populations ...

Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place ...

The study of human origins provides a fundamental narrative for our biological and cultural evolution. By combining fossil evidence with archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data, we can trace the ...

Human evolution is often told as a tidy story of adaptation, yet some of our most familiar body parts still defy straightforward explanation. From the jut of the human chin to the curve of the outer ...

Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

Our DNA reveals extinct "ghost lineages" that shaped human evolution, painting a complex, "braided stream" of history rather than a simple progression. These ancient groups, leaving no fossils, ...

Shaw Badenhorst works for the University of the Witwatersrand. He receives funding from GENUS, the National Research Foundation and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust. South Africa has one of the ...

Long before humans became master hunters, our ancestors were already thriving by making the most of what nature left behind. New research suggests that scavenging animal carcasses wasn’t a desperate ...