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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Viewpoint: ‘Darwinian beekeeping’ — Bees have adapted for over 100 million years. Maybe saving them from parasites could be as easy as leaving them alone
Bees have been around for about 120 million years... says Brenda Kiessling, a retired physician and an Eastern Apicultural Society ...
‘Neanderthal Man’ — Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo revolutionized anthropology. Here is a look back at his groundbreaking 2014 memoir
Svante Pääbo's memoir of how he came to lead a project to sequence the Neanderthal genome— Neanderthal Man: In Search ...
These key grizzly bear genes keep them diabetes-free over long winter hibernations — offering clues to how we might better treat the disease in humans
If a human ate tens of thousands of calories a day, ballooned in size, then barely moved for months, the ...
Here is the story behind Svante Pääbo’s Nobel Prize for sequencing the genome of Neandertals and discovering another ancestor, the Denisovans
I was thrilled to learn of the awarding of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Svante Pääbo, ...
Could evolutionary forces help life on Earth persist in climate change-altered future environments?
Human impacts on global ecosystems can be severe, widespread and irreversible. But life on Earth has evolved to meet environmental ...
Viewpoint: Challenging the ‘us vs. them tribalism myth’ — No, humans are not programmed by evolution to be in conflict with others
More than 200 million people were killed in the 20th century due to war and acts of genocide. Many of ...
Ever felt the love between you and your partner was ‘meant to be’? Here’s the evolutionary reason
In this age of science, many people see supernatural forces as illusions rooted in wishful thinking. But love remains a ...
‘Uniquely helpless’: ‘Growing Up Human’ discusses why our species has such an extraordinarily long childhood
Despite all the advice books written for parents about infancy and childhood, there have been surprisingly few treatments of childhood ...
Nature appears to have uniform laws guiding existence and evolution. Why?
In many ways, it’s the most remarkable fact of all about the Universe: that the constituents, the laws, and the ...
Despite the vast diversity of the size, shape and behavior of dogs, they share a deep evolutionary history
The oldest fossil that scientists agree came from a dog, rather than a wolf, comes from a site in Germany ...
Podcast: CRISPR Cas13 gene editing; Eye transplants; Sex might drive our athletic and artistic ability
A new gene-editing technique may be safer and more reliable than CRISPR-Cas9, according to a recent study ...
Most of the population of Eastern and Southern England descended from Nordic populations bordering the North Sea
Almost 300 years after the Romans left, scholars like Bede wrote about the Angles and the Saxons and their migrations ...
Keeping and caring for animals: Evidence emerges that human-animal bond reaches back 13,000 years ago
Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly ...
‘Rituals and intelligence evolved side by side’: How culture has shaped human evolution
No other animal uses ritual as extensively and compulsively as Homo sapiens. In fact, archaeologists often consider ritual to be ...
What drove the ascension of humanity? This one gene was critical
More than 500,000 years ago, the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans were migrating around the world when a pivotal ...
How did dogs evolve to be such close partners with humans? It may be helpful to look to mythology as well as science
The similarities between wolves and early domesticated dogs can make it challenging for researchers to tell them apart. In the ...
Patterns in the sand: We can sometimes predict how evolution will unfold
In a new paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international group of researchers demonstrated that a ...
Ancient DNA: Here’s how a thousand-year-old skeleton was diagnosed with a genetic disorder
The oldest clinical case of Klinefelter Syndrome has been detected in a 1,000-year-old Portuguese skeleton. Klinefelter Syndrome is a super ...
Do sex and romance drive our artistic and athletic abilities?
In his theorizing on the evolution of species, Darwin showed that, in addition to natural selection, animals have “ornaments” used ...
Are you a mosquito magnet? Blame it on the insect’s unique sense of smell — and your unique odor
If you’ve ever sprayed yourself head to toe in bug repellent, yet still felt like a mosquito magnet, it will ...
DNA solves medieval death mystery: 17 Ashkenazi Jewish people found in well after anti-Semitic crusade
The identity of the remains of the six adults and 11 children and why they ended up in the medieval ...
Ancient toys found in archaeological digs are changing perspectives on children in early civilizations
Over the two decades that archaeologist Gus Van Beek excavated Tell Jemmeh, an Assyrian settlement inhabited from around 3,800 to ...
How chewing may have shaped human evolution
About 10% of the calories consumed over the course of the day are expended on digesting, absorbing, metabolizing, and eliminating ...
Worm world: Are there more parasites now than ever?
"Is the world wormier than it used to be?" Chelsea Wood, an Associate Professor in the School of Aquatic and ...
How germs and ancient migrations help explain our world of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’
The Gökhem graves provide hard evidence for the ancient community's demise: genetic traces of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis ...
Evolution is not linear: Here’s why Darwin believed there are no ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ creatures
Why is our species almost universally seen as the logical endpoint of evolution, with all other species serving as inferior ...
Siesta science: Sleepy during the heat of summer? Evolution may be the cause
On the hottest summer days, you may find yourself dozing off in the middle of the day. In some parts ...
