evolution
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 ...
‘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 ...
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 ...
‘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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
‘Utterly magical’: This ‘two-step dance’ may explain the origins of life
Go back far enough in time, before animals and plants and even bacteria existed, and you’d find that the precursor ...
Darwin’s theory of evolution suggests a new approach for treating cancer
Cancers that have spread, known as metastatic disease, are rarely curable. The reasons that patients die despite effective treatment are ...
Podcast: Francis Galton: Brilliant scientist—and eugenics pioneer. How do we address his racist legacy?
Geneticist Dr Kat Arney explores how Francis Galton's eugenic ideas led directly to some of the 20th century's worst atrocities ...
Did evolution lead us down the path to heart disease?
The reason our species finds itself in the ever-constricting clutches of atherosclerosis — the insidious buildup of cholesterol-filled plaques in ...
Did God create humans within the last 10,000 years? 40% of Americans still think so, Gallup poll shows
A new Gallup poll shows that 40 percent of American adults comply to a strict view of creationism, in which ...
Why don’t we live longer? Because evolution is more concerned with helping us produce healthy children
How the force of selection diminishes over time ...
2 million years ago, we lost this gene. That may be why humans are so prone to heart attacks
One-third of global deaths are due to cardiovascular disease caused by atherosclerosis, when arteries are clogged with fat deposits. Although ...
If humans never evolved, would Earth still have intelligent life? This evidence suggests the answer is yes
The paths available to evolving organisms are far from limitless ...
Walking trees and swimming spiders: Why evolution on Earth could travel ‘some truly mind-boggling paths’
What creatures could develop in, say, 100 million years, given what we know about life on Earth and the principles ...
Long-term partnership or quickie hookup: Can evolution explain why a woman chooses one over the other?
For women, a short-term fling may involve a quest for good genes or just a good time. It’s a puzzle ...
Sleep may have originated underwater 450 million years ago
No one should have to sleep with the fishes, but new research on zebrafish suggests that we sleep like them. ...
Directed evolution tool could force viruses to churn out new drugs ‘in a matter of days’
Evolution is one of nature's most impressive forces, allowing organisms to adapt to changing environments to survive. By harnessing and ...
Podcast: Nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse on his ‘barking mad’ discovery of the genes responsible for cell division
Leading geneticist and Nobel prizewinner Sir Paul Nurse reveals the audacious experiment that everyone said was crazy ...
Biblical Philistines came from southern Europe, suggests analysis of ancient DNA
“[P]hilistine” is still sometimes lobbed as an insult for an uncultured or crass person. But who were the Philistines, exactly? ...
Horizontal gene transfer: The tricky part of evolution never imagined by Charles Darwin
Biologists have long recognized that the boundaries of one species may blur into another—by the process of hybridism, for instance ...
Book review: ‘The Lives of Bees’ offers 14 tips to help keep honeybees healthy and pollinating our crops
What were the lives of wild honey bees like before humans began intensively managing them and moving them all over ...
Women are more likely to get autoimmune diseases. Is the placenta to blame?
In the United States alone, women represent 80 percent of all cases of autoimmune disease. ... Some scientists now think ...
