Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis ...

Human newborns arrive remarkably underdeveloped. The reason lies in a deep evolutionary trade-off between big brains, bipedalism and the limits of motherhood.

For decades, the dominant theory in human evolution suggested that modern humans descended from a single ancestral lineage in Africa. However, groundbreaking new research from the University of ...

A new Yale study provides a fuller picture of the genetic changes that shaped the evolution of the human brain, and how the process differed from the evolution of chimpanzees. For the study, published ...

Human evolution has long been tied to growing brain size, and new research suggests prenatal hormones may have played a surprising role. By studying the relative lengths of index and ring fingers — a ...

A composite view of the Earth constructed by NASA from multiple satellite images Editor at Large Human evolution is a story writ slow. It’s been about 3.8 billion years since life on Earth emerged and ...

What will humans be like generations from now in a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)? Plenty of thinkers have applied themselves to questions like this, considering how AI will alter ...

John Gowlett receives funding from PAST Africa and Wenner-Gren Foundation, and his work has previously been supported by The Leverhulme Trust. He is associated with a new series of podcasts on human ...

Throughout most of human history, evolution progressed slowly. Small genetic changes took thousands of years to permeate populations. Natural selection was intentional, reactive, and gradual. However, ...

Humans, who are classified among the five great apes, are closest genetically, i.e., DNA similarity, to chimpanzees (98.8%-99%) and bonobos (98.8%). [Blueringmedia ...