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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Why don’t humans have tails like other hominids? It could be an accident of evolutionary history
For half a billion years or so, our ancestors sprouted tails. As fish, they used their tails to swim through ...
Viewpoint: Will “cancel culture” claim Darwin?
Given the scientific and political luminaries who have fallen under the axe, it’s not beyond possibility that Charles Darwin himself ...
Could COVID morph into just another common cold?
Within a few years, COVID-19 may behave like other coronaviruses, which usually result in milder colds. The virus will probably ...
Polar bears are the largest surviving predator in North America. How do they measure up to what used to roam the continent?
North America's largest predatory mammal was probably the massive short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), said Ross MacPhee, senior curator of mammals ...
‘This a crop that not only does not exist in the wild, but could not exist in the wild’: Modern corn is humanity’s creation, for mostly better and some worse
While the 1,500 miles of America's corn belt might mislead you into thinking corn is a wild crop, it was ...
Mongrel humans: Evolution has forged genetically diverse and overlapping populations
“We are all mongrels – the idea of a pure population doesn’t exist,” says Professor Himla Soodyall. In the fragmented ...
Genetic advances could make sex unnecessary. Experts weigh on what that fantastical future might be like
"What would life be like without sex? In a nutshell, very impersonal and mechanical, to say the least. SOCIALLY, the ...
Early humans traversed North America 10,000 years earlier than thought, in what is now New Mexico
For decades, many scientists were convinced that humans first arrived in the Americas as recently as 13,000 years ago, reaching ...
‘They squint, they stammer, they shuffle and shamble, they flounder like seals out of water’: Demonized for being different, left-handers are DNA puzzles
Being left-handed can be devilishly hard. In 1937, an educational psychologist whose work was later discredited wrote of many left-handers ...
There are 7,000 spoken languages — and almost all share certain structural elements. Could that be driven by genetics?
There are around 7,000 human languages that we know of worldwide, and while they're all unique, they're also more similar ...
Moroccan cave offers window into 120,000 years of human clothing evolution
Scientists on [September 16] said artifacts unearthed in a cave in Morocco dating back as far as 120,000 years ago ...
‘Existence of testosterone-based effects should not be an excuse for tolerating aggression, violence, discrimination or other ills’: How the ‘male hormone’ shapes behavior
Testosterone’s wide-reaching effects occur not just in the human body, but across society, powering acts of aggression, violence, and the ...
Horses originated in North America but went extinct there. New DNA trail shows how they survived and thrived in Europe
The first ancient horses lived in forests 55 million years ago, both in Europe and America. At that time they ...
‘The notion of humankind’s African origins unifies researchers’: Human evolution is like a braided stream, fossil and DNA evidence suggests
In a field with a reputation for bitter feuds and rivalries, the notion of humankind’s African origins unifies human evolution ...
How cyber criminals exploit our ‘lizard brains’ to steal our personal information
Nearly 800,000 people fell victim to cyberscams in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center ...
How do animals react when danger and death threaten?
Our concept of death is one of those characteristics, like culture, rationality, language or morality, that have traditionally been taken ...
‘It has never been a given that humans would survive on Earth’: Reflections on the nonlinear tangled web of human evolution
It has never been a given that humans would survive on Earth. We have likely faced extinction several times in ...
Why is the human brain so different from the brains of closely-related species?
More than 3,000 regions in the human genome are very different in people from in any other mammals, including our ...
99% of all animals that have ever lived on Earth started their development in eggs. Here is how evolution has worked its magic
More than 99 per cent of all animals that have ever lived on planet Earth have, in the first moments ...
‘Bold, aggressive, athletic and sociable’: Here are the many ways squirrels have human-like personality traits
Animal researchers in California have discovered human-like personality traits in squirrels that anybody watching one raiding nuts from a bird ...
How and when did ‘consciousness’ evolve?
[To find a reliable marker for consciousness,] we looked at genes, proteins, anatomical brain regions and neurophysiological processes, but none ...
Viewpoint: 5 arguments for God’s existence from NY Times columnist Ross Douthat — and 5 reasons why he’s wrong
[In a New York Times essay, columnist and Catholic Ross] Douthat not only advances some of the common and unconvincing ...
How dogs ‘read’ humans’ emotional states and use them to guide their decisions
New research has shed light on how an understanding of human emotions by man's best friend can help them predict ...
Dimwitted Neanderthals? Pioneering research challenges ‘outdated’ assumptions about our ancestors
For a long time, paleoanthropologists viewed Neanderthals as being very distinct from our own species, and inherently incapable of sharing ...
‘Our species began as a sort of arboreal rat when dinosaurs ruled the planet’: Early hominids spread around the world via a once-green Arabia
Our species began as a sort of arboreal rat when dinosaurs ruled the planet, and arguments abound over where the ...
Virgin birth? It’s actually been observed in about 80 vertebrate species, and most recently, in sharks
Scientists say a rare shark "virgin birth" may be the first of its kind after a baby shark was born ...
Why did humans develop sophisticated language skills while our ancestral cousins, chimpanzees, did not? Studying childbirth could provide clues
Did a “grammar module” just pop into our ancestors’ brains one day thanks to a random change in our DNA? ...
