Ancestry & Evolution
The desire to understand our origins is primal. By examining our DNA over successive generations through the evolutionary process of inherited characteristics of human and animal populations–as well as from those species from which humans share a common ancestry–we can decipher our individual and collective past and develop medical innovations for the future.
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The Fighting Hypothesis: An evolutionary explanation for fewer lefthanders — and why their share of the population could increase
A violent theory explains why most people are right-handed: Left-handed humans were likelier to get stabbed in the heart ...
‘Like the passenger manifest of Noah’s Ark’: Zoonomia Project reveals evolutionary links among humans and 240 other mammals
Despite decades of advancements in genomics, we still don’t know what most of our DNA does. But an ambitious international ...
Viewpoint: Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse ‘devalues both archaeology and Indigenous heritage’
Author Graham Hancock is back, defending his well-trodden theory about an advanced global ice age civilisation, which he connects in ...
Video: Here’s how early life on Earth could have originated elsewhere in the cosmos
The incredible survival skills of certain forms of bacteria and archaea, including the ability to stay dormant...in space ...
Self-domestication: Like humans and bonobos, elephants have evolved cooperative, socially beneficial behavior
Researchers argue that human evolution may resemble the process of animal domestication, where less aggressive animals are favoured ...
5 vestigial organs: How human evolution has rendered multiple parts useless
The natural selection process dictates that we keep the traits that continue to serve a purpose while the others become ...
Ancient humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Why did we settle down and start farming?
After millions of years of our predecessors and us evolving as hunter-gatherers, humans abruptly stopped roaming, settled down and started ...
Envisioning what doesn’t exist: How humans and other mammals evolved the capacity for memory
Imagination makes us human – this unique ability to envision what doesn’t exist has a long evolutionary history ...
Evolution denialism spreads in India
As part of its curriculum rationalisation exercise, the NCERT had last year announced that the chapter "Heredity and Evolution" will ...
Human GMOs: Vertebrate eyes evolved after ‘horizontal gene transfer’ from another species
New research suggests some components of vertebrate vision may not have been shaped incrementally as their genes passed down family ...
Pronatalism: An emerging new eugenics movement encourages intellectual elites to have more children
Linked to the subcultures of rationalism and ‘effective altruism’ (EA), and bolstered by declining birth rates, it has been gaining ...
Early plant domestication: How humans co-evolved with ancient crops
The story of how ancient wolves came to claim a place near the campfire as humanity's best friend is a ...
Bats rarely get viruses or cancer, and live extraordinarily long lives. Can that help guide human care?
While the Covid-19 pandemic exposed health risks from bats, it has also made finding out how they crush viral infections ...
Ecogenesis: Understanding the emergence of life on Earth
In Greg Fournier’s line of work — studying living systems that developed billions of years ago — outstanding questions far ...
Biodiversity collapse? How ancient fossils can help signal future threats
Over the past 500 million years, five large-scale extinctions have taken place, with current predictions indicating that humans are rapidly ...
Viewpoint: How birds help us better understand human infancy
To understand helpless human babies, our big brains and oddly involved dads, look to the evolution of birds not mammals ...
Archaeobiology provides fresh insights about the origins of food and farming
The precise drivers of agriculture remain a matter of fierce debate. Were people pushed into relying on plants for food ...
Did Neanderthals’ meat-eating habits contribute to their demise?
Understanding our ancestors’ diets may reveal critical clues about their evolutionary success or failure ...
What did ancient Egyptians look like? Here’s a facial approximation
A lifelike facial approximation of a man who lived 30,000 years ago in what is now Egypt may offer clues ...
When did the Anthropocene — the age of humankind — begin?
The epoch that extends from the last ice age, 11,700 years ago, and until today is called the Holocene. But ...
Viewpoint: Modern humanity is only 300,000 years along. Does that explain why we screw up so much?
How can humans have gotten so far, but still have so many problems? We are a young species. We are ...
‘Wandering minds’ have been critical for evolution
Our minds may have been the key to our survival. Learn the evolution and psychology of the wandering mind ...
Many animals can walk at birth. Why are human babies born with so few skills?
Baby animals can walk, stand and nurse even shortly after birth. This is absolutely impossible for human babies ...
Viewpoint: Existential ethics — Pondering the extinction of the global human population
Why would it be so bad if our species came to an end? It is a question that reveals our ...
Video: Watch how a breastfeeding mom teaches an orangutan how to nurse
Zoe the orangutan needed help breastfeeding. Her first baby, Taavi, had to be hand-raised after she failed to nurse him and ...
In Darwinian twist, AI could go ‘Terminator’ and gain upper hand over humans. Here’s how.
Artificial intelligence could gain the upper hand over humanity and pose "catastrophic" risks under the Darwinian rules of evolution, a ...
Jurassic Park and other pop-culture depictions got the gaping maw of Tyrannosaurus rex wrong: The dinosaur had lips that covered its long, serrated teeth
The chompers of two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs didn’t protrude outside their jaws, a new study suggests ...
