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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Pangaea Ultima: What geologists think landmasses of the world might look like in 250 million years
Only a fraction of the planet’s surface will be habitable to mammals when the next supercontinent, Pangaea Ultima, forms ...
Viewpoint: How genetics shapes human differences and why we shouldn’t avoid talking about this taboo
There’s a long history of people misusing genetics research to justify societal inequalities; many people have chosen to ignore it ...
Background mutations: Why CRISPR-edited genes have to work together with thousands of naturally-evolved genes
For tens of thousands of years, evolution shaped tomatoes through natural mutations. Then, humans came along. For centuries, we’ve bred ...
Neanderthals are in all of us: Genetic legacy of our Pleistocene ancestors broadens understanding of disease and survival
Scientists are finding that traits inherited from our ancient cousins are still with us now, affecting our fertility, our immune ...
Does same-sex bonding in animals provide insight into sexual orientation in humans?
Apes branched off from other primates about 25 million years ago and evolved a much higher rate of same-sex sexual ...
How brainless jellyfish are capable of learning
Cnidarians -- the animal group which includes jellyfish, sea anemones and coral -- are brainless, instead getting by with a ...
The evolution of cuteness (or why Ryan Gosling’s Ken has captured so many hearts worldwide)
The big idea: The question of how to trigger the cuteness response has implications beyond toys and movies ...
How octopi can edit their own RNA to rapidly respond to environmental changes
How organisms rapidly respond to a challenge: For an octopus, that might be a sudden plunge in water temperature, which ...
Could or should we use science to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction?
CRISPR and the Tasmanian tiger: Resurrecting the species could help restore ecological balance in Australia ...
Modern humans co-existed with at least seven now extinct hominid ancestors, and in many cases integrated their DNA
Ancient DNA technology has revolutionized the way we study human history and has quickly taken off, with a constant stream ...
Sensitivity to pain may be linked to our inherited Neanderthal genes
Scientists are still not sure if carrying these ancient genetic variants and greater sensitivity to pain was an evolutionary advantage ...
Zombie viruses: Record warming in the Arctic could revive ancient outbreaks
With the planet already 1.2C warmer than pre-industrial times, scientists are predicting the Arctic could be ice-free in summers by 2030s ...
New book Eve explores ‘how bodies evolved, how they work and what it really means to be a woman’
What is a woman? In Eve, Cat Bohannon traces the development of female bodies back 200 million years. A writer with ...
When was North America colonized by prehistoric humans? These New Mexico fossils upend the timeline
Fossilized ancient footprints found at White Sands National Park humanize them, revealing the actions of their lives in ways that ...
‘Beer is so old that we don’t know how old it is’: Brewing evolution from the Stone Age to the era of craft beers
Beer is so old that we don’t know how old it is. Most of the earliest known cultures brewed it, ...
Only cats and a few other animals purr. Here’s the science of how they do it
Scientists have struggled to understand how cats produce a low-pitched rumbling sound when they purr, but a new study sheds ...
Surprising consequence of dinosaur extinction: Helping flowers become a dominant form of plant life
When a mountain-size slab of space rock rammed into the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, the fallout was apocalyptic. Tsunamis washed away coastlines, ...
How the female body evolved
Dr. Deena Emera is an evolutionary geneticist, author, and teacher. She received her master’s in human evolution at NYU. At ...
Oldest known wooden structure: Unearthed 480,000-year-old interlocking logs found in Zambia suggest early hominids had advanced technical skills
Modified logs dating to about 476,000 years ago might be the oldest evidence of wooden structures, a new study finds ...
Menstruation and evolution: The history of humanity has side-lined the role of women
A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, “Eve” recasts the traditional story of evolutionary ...
Improving humanity through technology? How transhumanism is rerouting the course of human evolution
Improving humanity through technology? This is one of the ideas behind transhumanism, a cultural and ideological movement that advocates perfecting ...
Viewpoint — Convergence of AI and the blockchain: A new phase of human evolution or humanity’s downfall?
In a thought-provoking essay, blockchain pioneer Trent McConaghy argues that artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are destined to converge, enabling ...
Race and health: One gene variant carried mostly by people with African ancestry quadruples risk of Parkinson’s disease
A global effort to make genetic studies more diverse has led to a discovery about Parkinson's disease, a common brain ...
Wild elephants were domesticated — but not by humans. Here’s the surprising mystery of how that happened
An international team of researchers recently pointed out that similar features exist within populations of elephants, prompting the question of ...
Multiple evolutions? Does all life on Earth descend from the primordial soup or have different insects, plants and animals evolved separately but concurrently?
Did life evolve more than once? The origin of life is a central question in modern biology, and probably the ...
Video: How animals are rapidly evolving to keep up with the world humanity is destroying
Evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton says nature is rapidly changing to keep up with the world humanity has built ...
How reviving ancient heat-resistant proteins could help plants survive rising temperatures
After what NASA says was the hottest three-month period ever recorded on Earth, people in the Northern Hemisphere in particular ...
