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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Dad brains: Only women undergo bodily changes during and after childbirth? Think again.
... By the time [anthropologist Lee] Gettler looked into this field, it was already an established fact that fathers had ...
‘Tech bro hype’ vs. serious science: The inside story on Colossal’s attempt to create a real-life Jurassic Park
Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were ...
Sleeping for centuries: Unpacking the mystery of the survival of animals
What can plants or animals do when faced with harsh conditions? Two options for survival seem most obvious: move elsewhere ...
Understanding the evolution of individuality—Fruit flies may have an answer
As a Ph.D. student, I wanted to understand the evolution of individual differences in fruit fly behavior – the building ...
Paywall science predicament: AI answers often skew toward misinformation
When researchers Matthew Magnani of the University of Maine and Jon Clindaniel of the University of Chicago tried prompting ChatGPT ...
‘Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don’t?’
Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don’t? It’s one of the most enduring questions in the study ...
How war, politics and religion shape wildlife evolution
People often consider evolution to be a process that occurs in nature in the background of human society. But evolution ...
From Hitler to Richard III to Lenin, DNA can illuminate the lives, characters, and motivations of people long dead
Hitler left blood. Richard III left bones. Lenin left an entire body, preserved like a specimen. For centuries, historians and ...
What will the human race look like centuries into the future? Here are three possibilities, and one is chilling
Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products. Twenty years before ...
Promise & Peril—AI’s Open Questions: Year in Review
Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It is already embedded in how we grow food, diagnose disease, manage ...
Multiple wives or husbands is a scourge on society? Science suggests hidden advantages of polygamy and polygyny
In July 2025, Uganda’s courts swiftly dismissed a petition challenging the legality of polygamy, citing the protection of religious and ...
‘The dire wolf isn’t back’: A Colossal failure or the cutting-edge of conservation? Maybe both
When Colossal unveiled its interpretation of the dire wolf in April, the news made international headlines. Enthusiastic profiles in Time ...
GLP podcast: Evolutionary mismatch. Is civilization wrecking our health?
There's a dangerous mismatch between our biology and the tech-saturated world we inhabit—and it might be killing us. That's the ...
Evolutionary quirk or survival instict? Why are we ticklish?
Only humans and our close relatives are known to engage in tickling behaviour, suggesting that it may have evolved in ...
Mismatch of bodies and brains: Humans were not built for our industrialized present; our evolutionary future looks grim
In a recent research paper co-authored with Daniel Longman, ... [evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw] argues that the extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene ...
Speculation on how our brains may have evolved to invent the idea of gods
Recent archaeological and neurobiological evidence suggests that as the human brain evolved, specific cognitive abilities appeared that paralleled the invention ...
Quirks of evolution: Human vs ape testicle size and why we are the only animal with chins
The human body is a machine whose many parts – from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, ...
Kiss and tell: The 21 million-year-old history of smooching
Humans do it, monkeys do it, even polar bears do it. And now researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary origins of ...
Can culture evolve through natural selection?
For well over a century, Darwin’s theory of natural selection has served as biology’s grand unifying framework, explaining how species ...
About “genetic losers” and “mad genes”: My encounter with one of the most brilliant and controversial scientists of the genome era
The recent death of James Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the three-dimensional structure of the genetic material DNA, brought ...
A journey for one Muslim creationist to embrace evidence-based science and evolution
Ella al-Shamahi is a palaeoanthropologist and evolutionary biologist who grew up as a creationist. ... [She] thought she'd be able to ...
Would humans re-evolve if we went extinct?
To recreate an extinct species exactly, evolution would have to reproduce not just its traits but its entire genetic code ...
GLP podcast: Obesity—Disease or Choice? Ozempic’s Triumph Reignites the Debate
US obesity rates are falling from a record high after steadily climbing since the 1960s, dropping to 37 percent this ...
The resurrection of the dire wolf is phony, but Colossal Biosciences’ de-extinction research could revolutionize drug development and healthcare
Similar to the way NASA’s effort to launch humans into space once triggered a frenzy of technological advances in areas ...
Preserved poop offers a window into the health and life of ancient humans
Feces is an open window into the many other organisms living in our bodies—from beneficial bacteria to harmful parasites. The genetic material ...
Resurrecting Neanderthals: The scientific challenge and ethical debate
When scientists sequenced the Neanderthal genome in 2010, they learned that Neanderthals interbred with human ancestors before mysteriously going extinct. This genetic breakthrough yielded ...
Human differences: The concept of ‘race’ is infused with historical prejudice but ‘genetic populations’ are real. What’s the difference?
In the recent flurry of executive orders from President Donald Trump, one warned of “a distorted narrative” about race “driven ...
