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: GMOs are ‘unnatural’? Evolution explodes a popular crop biotech myth
The most controversial element of biotechnology is a trick we learned by experimenting on some of the simplest life forms in ...
Identical sex chromosomes could be key to a long life
When 109-year-old Jessie Gallan was asked about the secret to her long life, she replied “staying away from men.” Other ...
Global plan to halt extinction criticized for failing to address species humans don’t like
A global plan to halt the loss of nature is "weak" in one key area, say scientists. The new 10-year ...
Ancient tool technology passed down for thousands of generations by extinct human species, study says
When it comes to extinct human species, Neanderthals tend to hog the spotlight. But another group of early humans, Homo erectus, is ...
‘Game-changer’: Europe’s ExoMars rover armed with new life-testing tool
In a new paper published in the journal Astrobiology, Jacob Heinz, my colleague at the Technical University of Berlin, and I discuss ...
Extraterrestrial protein found inside meteorite? If true, discovery bolsters pursuit of alien life
A team of researchers claim to have found a protein inside a meteorite. It would be the first protein ever ...
Podcast: Bird poop, pus, and the Manhattan project—the surprising origins of the genetic alphabet
Kat Arney explores the origins of the genetic alphabet: A, C, T and G - the four 'letters' that spell ...
Visit Mars and bring back alien life? Troubles containing coronavirus should make us wary of bringing microbes to Earth
You know what? Maybe we ought to reconsider this whole thing about looking for life on other worlds. It would ...
Human-chimp hybrid fossil discovery rewrites human evolutionary history! Uhm, maybe not.
Does the anatomy of this ancient ape upend assumptions about how human ancestors learned to walk? ...
Something’s fishy: We got arms, legs and other skeletal features from our aquatic ancestors
In his 20 years as an ichthyologist, [John Sparks has] seen a lot of fish—intact and not. He’s traveled to ...
Searching for your doppelgänger: Why it’s not so unusual to find a twin
The global reach of the web has allowed people to find others who look like an identical twin, yet share ...
Early humans may have mated with Neanderthals and Denisovans a lot more than we thought
Before we became the only remaining humans on the planet, Homo sapiens mated with Neanderthals and the closely related Denisovans. New research is now revealing ...
Iraqi excavation rekindles debate over whether Neanderthals buried their dead
The excavation of an adult Neandertal’s partial upper-body skeleton in Iraqi Kurdistan has revived a decades-long debate over whether Neandertals intentionally buried ...
Human brains have more in common with our ‘ape cousins’ than previously thought
Our brains could have more in common with our ape cousins than previously thought, which might require us to rethink ...
Exploring the uneasy relationship between Charles Darwin and his skeptical publisher
Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution shook up Britain’s Victorian establishment upon the release of On the Origin of Species, the 1859 ...
Viewpoint: Biologist Jerry Coyne challenges view that sex is ‘a spectrum, not a binary’—such claims ‘undermine public trust in science’
As a biologist, I get especially irked at the repeated claim that sex in humans is “a spectrum, not a ...
Why it’s unlikely that humans gained the ability to speak through a single gene mutation
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of the human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language ...
Fossilized eggs suggest that dinosaurs were ‘decisively’ warm-blooded
The mysteries surrounding dinosaurs have fascinated generations of scholars and lay people alike. A group of Israeli scientists, led by ...
Video: Look inside Siberia’s Denisova cave, where researchers discovered bones of our mysterious relatives
The Denisovans are named after Denisova Cave in Siberia. Until 2019, it was the only place where archaeologists found bones ...
Podcast: ‘How to argue with a racist’—geneticist Adam Rutherford challenges what he calls ‘pseudoscience’ in genetics and politics
Adam Rutherford explains how to argue with a racist, hunting for the ghosts in the human genome, and recreating the ...
Viewpoint: Challenging those who claim evolution is ‘just a theory’
Such widespread rejection of the theory of evolution is fueled in part by the notion that evolution is “just a ...
New ‘DNA clock’ finds that if our genes had their way, humans would have a ‘natural’ lifespan of 38 years
A genetic “clock” lets scientists estimate how long extinct creatures lived ...
Humans are ‘biologically built’ to seek out friends
We humans are biologically built to seek friends, and we can see suggestions of our evolutionary past in the social ...
Why do humans have tailbones?
Though it’s currently useless, the human coccyx—commonly referred to as the tailbone—remains nestled at the bottom of the spine, a ...
3 modern adaptations that prove humans are still evolving
Genetic mutations lead to new traits — and with the world population now above 7 billion and rising, the chances ...
Were the mythical ‘ebu gogo’ creatures of Indonesia distant human relatives?
An ancient legend from the Indonesian island of Flores speaks of a mysterious, wild grandmother of the forest who eats ...
Modern Africans have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought, study says
Modern Africans have an average of 17 megabases of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, according to an analysis published [January ...
