Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place ...

The human body is a machine whose many parts – from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain – have been assembled in fits and starts over the four billion years of our ...

The study of human origins provides a fundamental narrative for our biological and cultural evolution. By combining fossil evidence with archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data, we can trace the ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

An international study changes the view that exposure to the toxic metal lead is largely a post-industrial phenomenon. The research reveals that our human ancestors were periodically exposed to lead ...

Long before humans became master hunters, our ancestors were already thriving by making the most of what nature left behind. New research suggests that scavenging animal carcasses wasn’t a desperate ...

The human body is often described as a marvel of “perfect design”: elegant, efficient and finely tuned for its purpose. Yet, when we look closer, a rather different picture emerges. Far from being a ...