evolution
Ancient African DNA reveals insights before slavery, colonialism
[B]ones between 5,000 and 15,000 years old — surrounding the start of the Holocene, our current geologic epoch — can ...
Podcast: Celebrating Charles Darwin’s 210th birthday
[February 12 was] Darwin Day. Charles Darwin was born 210 years ago … . Ten years ago I went to a ...
Pew survey exposes Americans’ complicated views on evolution and religion
Most biologists and other scientists contend that evolutionary theory convincingly explains the origins and development of life on Earth. So ...
‘Arrival of the fittest’: Fragile DNA ‘hot spots’ play key role in mutations, evolution
Against the odds, separate species and populations independently evolve the same solutions to life’s challenges, and the same genes are ...
Why does human skin color have so much variation?
Human skin color reflects an evolutionary balancing act tens of thousands of years in the making. There’s a convincing explanation ...
Tectonic ‘Origins’: Book examines how Earth’s hills and valleys jumpstarted evolution
In this age of worldwide climatic deterioration, many authors have documented what we are doing to our planet. Lewis Dartnell ...
Tracking Neanderthal DNA in modern humans: There’s been little change in 45,000 years
Neanderthals, modern humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, have been extinct for thousands of years. But due to interbreeding between the two ...
Inside the cave where Neanderthals and Denisovans may have shared a home
Mysterious ancient hominids known as Denisovans and their evolutionary cousins, Neandertals, frequented a southern Siberian cave starting a surprisingly long ...
Were humans superior to Neanderthals? Or just luckier?
Prof Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, explains why some old assumptions about the intellectual capabilities of our evolutionary ...
Have addictive personalities aided human evolution?
We’re so inundated with bleak facts about addiction that it may be hard to perceive any silver lining. It’s nearly ...
Viewpoint: The ‘Dangerous Idea’ of group differences is latest iteration of ‘left wing hysteria’ attack on evolutionary biology
Defending the veracity of racial biological differences are often, incorrectly, deemed to be justifications of social inequality ...
Do we have an undiscovered human ancestor? AI says it’s likely
Through artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have now learned that we may have a completely new and as yet unidentified subspecies ...
Fossils fill ‘missing link’ gap between early humans and predecessors
Early humans were still swinging from trees two million years ago, scientists have said, after confirming a set of contentious ...
Infographic: How do urban environments drive genetic change?
Air pollution may favor the adaptation of organisms to become more stress-resistant than their rural counterparts. There is some evidence ...
Viewpoint: Evolution denialism is back. This time it’s coming from the left
Evolutionary biology has always been controversial, but new discussions about sex and gender have led to a resurgence in denial ...
Rethinking evolution: Animals’ attraction to beauty may have nothing to do with survival
Numerous species have conspicuous, metabolically costly and physically burdensome sexual ornaments, as biologists call them. Think of the bright elastic ...
What jellyfish can show us about complex evolution through simple genomes
You might expect that as bodies became more complex, genomes did as well. But a recent study appearing in Nature Ecology & Evolution ...
10,000-year-old remains suggest dogs reached North America earlier than previously thought
The skeletal remains of three ancient dogs found buried in Illinois now represent the earliest evidence for the presence of ...
Urbanization is a ‘massive unplanned experiment’: How cities affect evolution
[C]ities are having profound effects on their animal and plant residents. Globally, about 0.5 percent of Earth’s land area is ...
Why did dinosaurs thrive for so long, while other ancient species faced extinction?
Everybody knows about the K/Pg Mass Extinction. As soon as we learn about dinosaurs, and demand to know why we ...
Are science and religion destined to be at ‘war’?
Religion and science are incorrectly pictured as warring belief systems ...
Why don’t humans have fur? We have theories, but no answers
Evolutionary theorists have put forth numerous hypotheses for why humans became the naked mole rats of the primate world. Did we adapt ...
Computer scientists turn to evolutionary biology for inspiration
Creationists love to insist that evolution had to assemble upward of 300 amino acids in the right order to create just ...
DNA analysis shows ‘everyone had been wrong’ about mysterious Siberian unicorn
It didn't look much like the dainty unicorns of myth and legend, but the extinct unicorn of Siberia is even ...
Is evolution denial an attempt to ‘make humans special’?
Evolutionary biology has always been controversial. Not controversial among biologists, but controversial among the general public. This is largely because ...
‘Interesting puzzle’ created by hand tools found near long-vanished Arabian rivers
Nearly 200,000 years ago, at the confluence of two long-vanished river systems in the heart of Arabia, people climbed a ...
Startling discovery: Ancient mixed-race girl had Neanderthal and Denisovan parents
[T]ens of thousands of years ago, modern humans encountered Denisovans – and had sex with them. It is a startling ...
