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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Making the case for a sixth major mass extinction–the end-Guadalupian event
Life on Earth has diversified into countless forms over the course of billions of years, but it hasn’t always been ...
Evolution, the human diet and the meat vs. plant conundrum
Evidence suggests our hominin ancestors turned to meat when climate change reduced resource-rich vegetation. The signatures of these changes may ...
Evolutionary quirk: Humans are defined by ‘singular vulnerability’ to heart attacks
There are many things that set us humans apart from other species: large brains, bipedalism, a predilection for puns. But ...
Evolution takes time: ‘Relatively recent’ gene variant helps some humans cope with high-sugar diets
It’s well known among palaeontologists and nutrition experts that the human diet began to change after our distant ancestors transitioned ...
How early farmers helped barnyard grass become one of the ‘world’s worst’ weeds
Vavilovian mimicry allowed barnyard grass to become the scourge of rice cultivation ...
Tackling Stone Age stereotypes and misconceptions including this: They made tools out of more than just stone
Although most depictions of Stone Age hunters are male, women and children played a huge part in the creation and ...
Scientists reconstruct yet-to-be-found skull of humans’ last common ancestor entirely through computer imaging
[R]esearchers like Dr. [Aurélien] Mounier are using computers and mathematical techniques to reconstruct the appearance of fossils they have yet ...
Polydactylism: Six fingers and toes may be better than five
In a thrilling paper published recently in Nature Communications, researchers set out to study the abilities of people with extra fingers. This condition, known ...
‘Beneficial archaic DNA’ still present and impacting humans today
Most Neanderthal variants exist in only around 2 percent of modern people of non-African descent. But some archaic DNA is ...
Neanderthal children footprints: In French quarry, largest group of hominin footprints ever found
They walked and perhaps played along the beach in a prehistoric world; we know this as archaeologists have discovered hundreds ...
New analysis of Dead Sea scrolls reveals minerals not typically from region
The Dead Sea scrolls have given up fresh secrets, with researchers saying they have identified a previously unknown technique used ...
‘Are Neanderthals just another version of us’?
As scientists peer further back in time and uncover evolutionary relationships in unprecedented detail, their findings are complicating the narrative ...
Can DNA from Loch Ness help solve 86-year old monster mystery?
It was a science story made for the headlines: a monster, more than a thousand years of mystery and maybe, ...
First people in the Americas arrived by Pacific pathway, new evidence suggests
Around 14,800 years ago, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet separated from its neighboring Laurentide Ice Sheet, creating an ice-free corridor that ...
3.8-million-year-old Australopithecus anamensis skull found in Ethiopia may redefine branches of human evolution
Spotting the intact Australopithecus skull in the Ethiopian dirt caused paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie to literally jump for joy. … The ...
‘It seems so obvious’: How parasites influenced the evolution of human brains
It seems so obvious that someone should have thought of it decades ago: Since parasites have plagued eukaryotic life for ...
How the brains of different dog breeds have evolved to meet our needs
As humans have gone, so have their canine companions. But a new study shows the subtle ways our long-lasting partnership ...
Infographic: Meet Asgard archaea, a simple cell that just might look like one of our oldest relatives
The cells of all animals, plants, and fungi have an impressive complexity, with a variety of compartments specialized in various ...
Unraveling the genetic mystery of Skeleton Lake, an ancient Indian site filled with hundreds of human bones
At the mysterious Skeleton Lake in northern India, the dead are talking, revealing surprises through centuries-old DNA. And it’s not ...
Podcast: Overlooked women in science, Huntington’s disease and witch trials. The best of Genetics Unzipped
Kat Arney selects her favourite stories from the first 20 episodes of the Genetics Unzipped podcast ...
‘Wild theory’: Can aggressive cancers evolve into new species?
Aggressive cancers can spread so fiercely that they seem less like tissues gone wrong and more like invasive parasites looking ...
7 misconceptions about evolutionary psychology, including the idea that behavior is genetically determined
Evolutionary approaches to psychology hold the promise of revolutionizing the field and unifying it with the biological sciences. But among ...
How ‘alien genetics’ would change our understanding of life, biology and evolution
While we await our first contact with alien life, scientists investigate possible scenarios for extraterrestrial biology ...
Believe it or not, Neanderthals were both athletic and artsy
They were sprinters. Previously believed to have been endurance runners, it is now thought Neanderthals favoured “more power sprint than ...
Are we reaching the limits of human life expectancy?
With life expectancies steadily rising in most countries, high quality care is essential for aging populations ...
98.5% of our DNA is ‘junk’: But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play a key role in disease, evolution
Would you purchase a book with over 98 percent of the text written in gibberish? Biology has no business in ...
Podcast: Why did we survive, when the Denisovans and Neanderthals did not?
The Denisovans have long been one of the most elusive ancient human cousins, until now. In May 2019, scientists revealed ...
