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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How evolution and genetics shape human morality
There is a large body of research demonstrating and delineating the complex moral instincts of young children, including babies far ...
Viewpoint: Why Earth is almost certainly the universe’s only example of intelligent life
In newly published research from Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, scientists study the likelihood of key times for evolution of life ...
Sordid ledger: Humans’ destructive history of wiping out other species
Sometime in the late 1600s, in the lush forests of Mauritius, the very last dodo took its last breath. After ...
Why we think newborn babies look more like their fathers and other myths and misconceptions about evolution
In chatting about this or that, about babies, dating, or the mysterious lives of cats, someone brightly chimes “That’s because ...
What does it take to run a 2-hour marathon? (It’s in the genes, and East Africans have them)
Elite runners need a specific combination of physiological abilities to have any chance of running a sub-two-hour marathon, new research shows ...
Plants are evolving to look like their surroundings to protect themselves from scavenging humans
Fritillaria delavayi grows on the rocky alpine slopes of China’s Hengduan Mountains, and for more than 2,000 years its dried ...
We know the birthplace of humanity was in Africa but we still don’t know where
Pinpointing the place from which we steadily evolved into the strange, upright, over-sized brain creatures we are today would help ...
Giant dinosaurs trace their evolution to global warming during the early Jurassic period 180 million years ago
Sauropods were truly amazing animals, and included the largest land-living animals known, with body lengths of up to 40 meters ...
De-extinction: Why CRISPR gene editing might be the most revolutionary development in science ever
Called “de-extinction,” the resurrection of lost species is one of the many applications to be revolutionized by the new gene-editing ...
Are Sudanese Arabs?
Sudan, once the largest and one of the most geographically diverse states in Africa, split into two countries in July ...
Last surviving white giraffe, a genetic anomaly, fitted with GPS tracker to deter poachers
The unique male [white] giraffe now stands alone after a female and her calf were killed by poachers in March. [A] ...
Charles Darwin proposed the theory of life’s watery creation 100 years ahead of everyone else
Darwin never wrote about how life began in his books, but he did speculate about it in private. The key ...
Our Stone Age ancestors thrived on ‘chunks of meat,’ but plants were just as key to their survival
Early humans wouldn't be able to survive without glucose from plants ...
When humans evolved selfishness
There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We’re apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to ...
‘A million years of memory and history, biology and psychology’: The science behind what makes the dog-human bond so unique
In a minute or two, Winston will choose. And in that moment will be a million years of memory and ...
Planet of the Apes redux? Human brain gene inserted into monkey fetuses enlarged their brains, raising ethical concerns
Researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany and Japan’s Central Institute for Experimental ...
‘Already facing extinction’: Recently discovered leaf-eating Popa langur species down to 200 monkeys
Langurs are a group of leaf-eating monkeys that are found across south east Asia. The newly described animal is known ...
To the victor go the spoils: How Homo sapiens prevailed in battles for survival with Neanderthals
Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out ...
How long do most mammal species survive before going extinct?
How long do species usually last before they go extinct? It turns out the answer we find now could be ...
How evolution could thwart the new COVID vaccines and what we can do to prevent that
The first drug against HIV brought dying patients back from the brink. But as excited doctors raced to get the ...
Scientists reconstructed fox-sized dinosaur ‘pea brain’
According to [a] new study, Buriolestes schultzi’s brain had an elongated shape and weighed about 1.5 grams, as much as a ...
Males=hunters, females=gatherers? Not so fast. Many early big-game hunters were women, research suggests
In 2018, during archaeological excavations at a high-altitude site called Wilamaya Patjxa in what is now Peru, researchers found an ...
Debating the prickly notion of identity: It’s different depending on your ideology
In 2020, much of the public discussion of social issues revolves around notions of identity. Ideas about race, reformulations of ...
What did a teenage girl look like 9,000 years ago? Here is her face, reconstructed from bone fragments found in a cave in Greece
Swedish sculptor Oscar Nilsson reconstructed the face of an 18-year-old young woman, dubbed Avgi, whose 9,000-year-old bones were found in ...
Biologist Emily Willingham explores humans’ obsession with animal penises in “Phallacy”
The organ appears in religious texts, laws, daily speech and even in photos sent, often uninvited, to people’s phones. But ...
Dogs and humans migrated together across the ancient world, DNA evidence shows
Dogs are one of the biggest enigmas of domestication. Despite decades of study, scientists still haven’t figured out when or where ...
Extinct Denisovans – modern human cousins – may have contributed genes to high-altitude adaptations seen in Tibetans
[A] cave on the Tibetan Plateau was once home to Denisovans, an ancient species of humans whose remains had previously ...
